Another quick extract recipe -
something for this autumn.
My Bavarian lager yeast had expired, so I substituted California
lager yeast (a better choice for a Baltic porter, but it's what
I had on hand.)
Unconsolidated
India Pale Ale (#41)
Geology
Amber Ale - quick extract batch to teach some young people how
to brew (#40)
I made this quick batch as an
educational demonstration - a context for teaching enzyme
catalysis (amylase and proteolytic enzymes), isomerization
(alpha acids), and metabolism/fermentation (conversion of sugars
to alcohol + CO2).
Peacock Copper
India Pale Ale - all-grain (#39)
This was the IPA I brewed at a
public workshop to demonstrate to the process from start to
finish at a local gardening/canning business called the Companion
Plant. I was a bit nervous because Matt Lindenmuth -
the professional brewer who founded the Saucony Creek
Brewering Company - was there to watch. Being a
professional, Matt minds his temperatures down to the single
degree and is aware of many more variables than I monitor.
(Matt brought along a sample of his Foundry Water IPA, which was
brilliant! )
The demonstration went well. A handful of people stayed
for the full 4½ hour show. The Companion Plant store's
water is UV-treated, carbon-filtered, and reverse "osmosisized"
- the purest water I've ever used. I'm optimistic about
the batch!
I'm naming this batch after the mineral bornite because
bornite-bearing copper ores are called "peacock ore,"
and peacocks are showy (... and this batch was made as a
show).
Helen's
Amber Ale - extract recipe brewed by my friend (#38)
I'm going to give a public
demonstration on how to brew beer at a local gardening
shop. The demonstration will be an all-grain recipe so
people can see the mashing process. So we can demonstrate
the bottling process on the same day (something that usually
happens weeks to months after brewing), Helen came over and
brewed a batch that we'll ferment now and bottle during the
demonstration. We will bottle this batch during the
hour-long boiling stage of the demonstration beer.
Nickel
Laterite Bock
- all-grain bock from leftover grains (#37)
Some bags of specialty grains have
been sitting in my closet for a long time. This is a bock
recipe designed to use up most of those "scraps."
Nickel laterites are ore deposits that form from the "scraps" of
rock when weathering processes leach peridotite.
Peridotite is made mostly of the minerals olivine and
pyroxene. Very low concentrations of nickel occur in those
two minerals. Nickel is a very difficult metal to dissolve
- much more difficult than the other ingredients in olivine and
pyroxene. In tropical climates, rain is abundant and
leaches away all but the least soluble elements, leaving behind
residual nickel ore. Some of the nickel minerals are quite
beautiful, such as garnierite (an "apple green," nickel-rich,
clay-like mineral group).
Siccar
Point is a beautiful, historically significant site in
Scotland where one of the earliest modern geologists - James
Hutton - was inspired by an angular unconformity.
Geologists work a lot like
detectives in the way we make observations, imagine several
scenarios that might explain those observations, then look for
additional evidence to reject insufficient hypotheses. I
wonder what famous detective each geologist imagines themselves
to be... I suppose people would liken me to Kojak
considering my bald head. (Question: Which famous detective is most
like you?Sherlock
Holmes? Miss
Marple? Philip
Marlowe? Sam
Spade? Nancy
Drew? Perry Mason? Columbo? TJ Hooker?)
Sometimes detectives crack cases based not on observations of
evidence present on
the ground, but by noticing that something is missing.
Unconformities are that latter kind of evidence because
unconformities are the missing rocks in an otherwise
temporally-continuous sequence. Unconformities are like
missing pages in a book! The missing rocks in
unconformities are usually absent because the region was
uplifted after rock deposition, and when rocks are pushed up,
they get exposed to rain/wind/ice/etc. that erodes them
away. Thus, when geologists find gaps in the rock record,
they know that there may have been an ancient mountain-forming
event that happened sometime after the old rocks on the bottom
and sometime before the younger rocks resting on top of the
unconformity surface.
An 80 shilling Scottish ale is moderately strong.
The "80 shilling" part of the name presumably refers to how much
a pint of the stuff must have once cost. 60-shilling ales
are are lighter in body and cheaper because they require less
ingredients to make. 80-shilling ales are
medium-full-bodied - not a "chugging beer," but also not a high
gravity beer like the Wee Heavy Scottish ales.
This beer had a huge malt bill and the
mash was very efficient (iodine test indicates almost complete
conversion of starches to sugars). This is going to be a
very big beer. OG stands for "original gravity" which refers
to the specific gravity of the beer prior to fermentation.
Specific gravity is a measure of how heavy the beer is compared to
the weight of the same volume of water. Dissolved sugars
leached from malted barley grains increase the specific
gravity. Dissolved sugars are the food for the fermenting
yeast, so higher sugar content means the alcohol concentration
will be higher. Beers that have very high sugar contents also tend to be
sweeter after fermentation because the yeast eat sugar and excrete
alcohol until the alcohol concentration is just too high for the
yeast to do their thing anymore. (I imagine little one-celled wee
beasties sloppily sitting around on microscopic couches - too
snockered to eat). The sugars that are leftover after the yeast go
dormant will make the beer sweet. The hops content in bock
beers is relatively low, so there will be some bittering and hops
flavor, but nothing overpowering.
India Pale
Ale - Home Garden All Grain India Pale Ale
(#34)
This batch uses Cascade hops grown in
my garden! This is one small step toward total beer
independence!
These hops have been sitting frozen in my freezer since
2008. (Yeah - it'll be impressive if there are any alpha
acids left. We'll see!)
The malt bill is just the generic IPA in Papazian's The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing
(1991) because I'm really only interested in the hops flavor and
bittering capacity.
The weights of hops are high because they're wet (i.e., I
harvested them and stuck them straight in the freezer without
drying).
Because the flavor and bittering of these hops is an unknown, I
made a single batch of base wort, then split the wort evenly into
two pots, each of which had a different hops boiling schedule
(batches A and B were brewed simultaneously).
Wow! This turned out quite good.
The hops flavor is classic Cascade.
Malt flavors are subtle as intended (I didn't want to distract
from the hops).
Extra
Special Bitter - Ozymandias Extra Special Bitter (#33)
Brewed with my dear friends Sarah and
Mike. Sarah is
the person who originally taught me how to
brew beer seven years ago. I hope that she was not
disappointed with my technique <:-/ .
Extra Special Bitter ales are not as bitter as their name would
suggest. They're actually supposed to be balanced - not too
hoppy and not too malty. Because they're a "soft pitch right
over the plate," they're a nice beer for company. This batch
was very mellow at time of bottling. It stayed pretty mellow
over time. Good enough - not bad, but not great.
Brewed with a friend - Dr. James
Rasmussen - geomorphologist (thus the geomorphologic name) and all
around great guy. I will miss him!
This is a dry stout, which means the yeast will be able to ferment
essentially all of the sugar in the wort.
Dry beers are lighter - not in color, but in how they sit on your
tongue - so this will be a nice summer drink served on hot days.
The conversion of starch to sugar during mashing was complete,
although it's tough to tell if the iodine turns black when the
wort is black!
Insel is German for
"island," and berg means
"mountain." Inselbergs are large, isolated rocks surrounded
by a "sea" of relatively subdued topography. They commonly
form in places where glaciers have carved across the countryside,
but flowed around some particularly resistant knob, although
inselbergs can form by non-glacial means, as well.
Microcline Scottish 80
Shilling Ale - All Grain Scottish Ale
(#31)
9 lbs. Simpsons Golden Promise
Malt
1 lbs. Simpsons Crystal Malt
1 oz. UK Kent Goldings Hops (60
min)
Wyeast #1028 Irish Ale Yeast.
(originally pitched Wyeast #1728 Scottish Ale
Yeast, but it did not start).
Mash Schedule:
125° F for 25minutes
150° F for 40 minutes
155° F for 20 minutes
170° F for 10 minutes
Brewed February 11, 2010 after the big
snow storm. The Scottish ale yeast I first pitched didn't
activate, so I tossed in the Irish Ale yeast, which started up a
few days later.
The gridded pattern in some of the grains in
this microscope view of granite is due to twinning - a special
type of crystal intergrowth that is characteristic of the mineral
microcline. The slang term for this type of twinning is "Tartan
Plaid" twinning.
This turned out very well. Not sweet like a Wee Heavy
Scottish. Not bitter like typical English/American
ales.
This is an all grain recipe so
really warmed the house when I made it. It's matured into a
truly outstanding beer - one of my all time favorites!
13.5 lbs German Munich malt
0.5 lbs Weyermann Carared malt
0.25 lbs Weyermann CaraAroma malt
0.125 lbs Weyeremann Carafa III
malt
1 oz. Perle hops (alpha = 7.8%)
(60 minutes)
Wyeast #2487 Hella-bock yeast
3½ gallons water for mash + 3½
gallons 170°F sparge water
Mash schedule:
130°F 30 minutes
140°F 15 minutes
150°F 60 minutes
155°F 10 minutes
160°F 30 minutes
Brewed January 24, 2010
OG = 1.086 @ 80°F
FG = (forgot to measure)
This is my favorite beer that I've ever made.
I need to do this again!
note: Bokbier
is the original German spelling of Bock
beer originally brewed in the town of Einbeck.
Bokite is the unusual mineral pictured above with an empirical
formula (Al, Fe3+)1.3(V5+,V4+,
Fe3+)8O20 •7.4H2O
note: Holozän = Holocene =
11,500 years old to present Pleistozän = Pleistocene
= 2 million to 11,500 years old Tertiär = Tertiary = 65
million to 2 million years old Kreide = Cretaceous = 145
million to 65 million years old Jura = Jurassic = 200
million to 145 million years old Trias = Triassic = 250
million to 200 million years old Perm = Permian = 300
million to 250 million years old Karbon = Carboniferous =
360 million to 300 million years old Devon = Devonian = 415
million to 360 million years old Prädevon = Pre-Devonian =
older than 415 million years Kristallin = Crystalline
basement rocks = very old metamorphic rocks Känozoische Vulcanite =
Cenozoic volcanic rocks = younger than 65 million years Paläozoische Vulcanite =
Paleozoic volcanic rocks = 380-280 million years Plutonite = plutonic
rocks = rocks formed when magma crystallizes deep underground
I brewed this one with my book club.
A few other professors and I started a book club about two years
ago.
It grew to include about a dozen guys.
Some of them want it to be a guy thing - no women allowed - just
guys sitting around drinking beers and talking about a book.
That rule was a bit of a burr under my saddle for a while.
Eventually I was asked to host the monthly meeting, so I declared
the night a coed meeting and invited all the spouses.
It was a fun night, but the group was too big to facilitate
discussion and people didn't form their own small groups, so it
was a failure as a forum for further exploring the book.
It turned out that most people were fine with the gender
segregation, so I'm now fine with it. ¿Who am I to tell
other folks what to do? I'm no king.
So it turned out to be a failure of a meeting in that regard,
too. C'est la vie.
I hear Sir Winston Churchill said"Success is the ability to go from
failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."
Marine geologist Adrienne Oakley
and paleoclimatologist Chris Bochicchio came over to learn to
brew. They did most of the work on this one, but I'm fine
with taking part of the credit. Since Adrienne is so fond of
oceanographic research, this beer is named after another woman of
the sea - Rachel
Wall (see
also here and here
and here).
1 lbs. Briess Caramel 20
6.3 lbs. Amber Malt Syrup
2 oz. Cascade (60 min)
1 oz. Cascade (1 min)
Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast.
Optimum temperature: 60-72° F.
Brewed November 22, 2009
Bottled December 20, 2009
The quick extract
kit
version of this beer was so popular that I did an all-grain
version. It was a nice afternoon project to do with my
friends Sarah
and Mike. Life doesn't get much better than time with close
friends and family! :-) Succinite
is the type of amber found in the famous Baltic marine muddy sands
(Eocene
and early Oligocene age). Geologists have even worked
out the types
of trees that bled the sap that formed the amber
nodules. This is an amber ale that will have a color pretty
typical of this type of geological amber.
The recipe is good (from NorthernBrewer.com), so I won't tinker
with that.
8 lbs. 2-Row Malted Barley
1 lbs. Munich Malt
1 lbs. Caramel 60L Malt
2 oz. Cascade Hops (60 min)
1 oz. Cascade Hops (15 min)
Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast.
Optimum temperature: 60-72° F.
mash schedule
122° F for 30 minutes
(protein rest)
145° F for 30 minutes
155° F for 20 minutes
170° F for 10 minutes
The mash went very well - complete conversion
according to the iodine
test for starch.
The full volume boil efficiently extracted alpha acids from the
hops and the alpha acids isomerized appropriately during the 1
hour boil. This will be slightly hoppier than the extract
kit, even though the amount of hops is the same.
I am very optimistic about this one.
Another all-grain recipe -- a
medium-bodied IPA for casual drinking. The Deccan Traps are a very thick
accumulation of basaltic lava flows in west central India.
Hot, gooey lava flow after lava flow poured out of the earth
roughly 65 million years ago.
As old lava flows cooled, new ones ran over the fresh crust,
progressively thickening the pile until it was over 2,000 meters
thick (that's over 6,500 feet, or roughly 1¼ miles!) and covered
an area 200,000 square miles (the area of New England, including the New York and
Pennsylvania). The volcanic gasses that escaped the erupting
lava had a strong impact on the earth's climate at the time and
are thought by some researchers to have helped cause the
extinction of the dinosaurs. The weight of the piled lava
flows created pressures on the warm rocks at the bottom of the
sequence over 9,000 pounds per square inch, squeezing hot water
trough fractures that deposited beautiful zeolite minerals prized
by collectors all over the world.
12 lbs. 2 row malted barley
1.5 lbs. Simpsons dark crystal
malt
0.5 oz. Northern Brewer hops
(9.9% alpha acid) (60 minutes)
0.5 oz. Centennial hops (8.0%
alpha acid) (60 minutes)
0.5 oz. Amarillo hops (8.2% alpha
acid) (20 minutes)
0.5 oz. Kent Goldings hops (4.1%
alpha acid) (20 minutes)
0.5 oz. Kent Goldings hops (5.7%
alpha acid) (20 minutes)
0.5 oz. Willamett hops (4.2%
alpha acid) (5 minutes)
1.75 oz. Fuggle hops (4.5% alpha
acid) (5 minutes)
1.0 oz. Fuggle hops (4.5% alpha
acid) (dry)
Wyeast #1272 American Ale Yeast
II
Crush 2 row malt
Mash 2 row malt
30 minutes protein rest (122°F)
30 minutes @ 140-145°F
35 minutes @ 150°F
15 minutes @ 155-160°F
Sparge with 3 gallons 170°F water
- keep rinse water separate from primary mash liquid
Crush dark crystal malt and add
to sparge rinse water
Heat crystal malt + sparge rinse
to 170°F
Remove crystal malt grains with
China cap and combine sparge rinse with primary mash liquid
Boil 3 hours without hops to
reduce volume
Add hops and boil according to
schedule
Cool, dilute with 1 gallon cold
water (to 5.2 gallons total), and pitch yeast
note: mash went very well -
passed iodine test
note: fermentation began in earnest 36 hours after pitching.
note: transferred to secondary fermentation vessel 15Feb09 -
Fermentation rate very slow, sediment had settled
note: dry hopped 1 ounce Fuggles hops (4.5% alpha acid) 21Feb09
note: bottled 28Feb09. FG = 1.02 (OG = 1.07) (OG
- FG)* 105 = 5.25% abv
... I think I went a little far with a full ounce of Fuggles dry
hop (?)
I liked the extract kit so much that
I'm going to try a batch the whole grain way. Being a high
gravity beer, I'll need to mash a LOT of grain and then boil the
volume down. I waited for a cold day to do this because
boiling that much wort down really warms the house up!
The recipe was based on Flemmings Fabulous Fungi in Brew Your Own magazine, but
I bumped up the two-row pale malt a little. I also included
the specialty grains in the mash rather making a tea with them.
10 lbs. 2-row pale malt
3 lbs. Munich malt
2 lbs. Amber malt
2¼ lbs. Victory malt
1 lb. crystal malt
6 oz. Chocolate malt
2 oz UK Kent Goldings hops (4.5
%alpha acid)
Crush all grains and mix in big
hopper
Split into two fractions for
mashing (total volume was a little big for my 8 gallon kettle)
Mashed at 130-150°F (see
chart) (note: conversion incomplete, but close
enough according to iodine
test)
Sparged (rinsed the grains) each
fraction with 2 gallons of 170°F water (total volume 7
gallons)
note: blue, pink,
and green horizontal bars indicate upper temperature range for
respective enzymes (yeah - I had some temperature control
problems, but not too bad) note: OG = 1.110 on
January 11, 2009 note: transferred to
secondary carboy January 24, 2009 - very large volume of trub
(sludge) - 2 gallons - possibly due to mashing specialty grains
with the fermentable grains, or possibly due to my erratic
temperature fluctuations during mashing. note: tastes great at
bottling! This stuff will be fine drinking! FG = 1.030
The name Barrovian refers to the
characteristic belts of metamorphic rocks in Scotland. These
belts indicate differences in the intensity of metamorphism in
different parts of the country. The Scottish Highlands are
one of the great places many geologists aspire to visit at some
point during their lifetimes.
I'd purchased two extract
kits for the book club (so the group could choose the style
we brewed together). They chose the Irish Red (see
below), which I suppose makes this the red-headed step child of
book club. I'm looking forward to it, though!
1 lbs. Briess Caramel 20
6.3 lbs. Amber Malt Syrup
2 oz. Cascade (60 min)
1 oz. Cascade (1 min)
1272 American Ale Yeast II
note: this is a very
popular beer! This stuff is going fast!
This is my first attempt at an all-grain
Imperial IPA (i.e., made without using malt extract - just grains
and water).
I got excellent conversion of starches to sugars, but rinsed the
grist (grains) a little too thoroughly, so I had to boil down a
large volume of rinse water (12 gallons boiled down to 5).
Lesson learned: be more aware of diminishing marginal returns and
monitor the specific gravity of the rinse water continuously so I
know when to stop rinsing sooner.
My choice of boiling hops was made to use up some leftovers from
past beers. Since they'll be boiled for over an hour, the
flavors of these hops will be lost anyway. I dry hopped with
Amarillo because it's like Cascade (i.e., citrus-like)
characteristic of west coast ales, but still something different.
16 lbs. 2-row malted barley
0.75 lbs. Durst Vienna malt
0.5 lbs. Simpsons Dark Crystal
malt
0.75 oz. Chinook hops (12% αlpha
acids) (75 min)
0.67 oz. Saaz hops (3.9% αlpha
acids) (75 min)
0.75 oz. Hallertau hops (4.4%
αlpha acids) (75 min)
Home grown hops!
My hops plants were pretty spindly the first year, but this year
they've been much more productive.
My friends at the K-T Homestead donated some of their hops to the
project, as well.
I had no idea how much of each to use, so I just went by "feel and
taste."
0.75 lbs. Crystal malt
0.5 Carapils malt
3.3 lbs. Munton's extra light
malt extract syrup (60 min)
3.3 lbs. Munton's extra light
malt extract syrup (20 min)
Originally chosen by a friend who
wanted to see the process, we both ended up being so busy that the
yeast started to get old.
I tried pitching it with the German Ale type yeast, but it was
just too far past its date, so I used some fresher American Ale
yeast.
This is a very strong ale made from a
kit by Northern Brewer (Lord Fatbottom). I liked their
regular barley wine, so I thought I'd try their Cadillac. It
takes a full year to make, so there'll be plenty of anticipation!
Make yeast starter one week in
advance
Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast
(2 packages)
10 ounces corn sugar
2 gallons cold water
Crush
0.25 lbs. Briess Carapils
0.25 lbs. Briess Crystal 40
0.25 lbs. Dingemans Caramunich
0.25 lbs. Simpsons Medium
Crystal
Heat to 170°F
Remove grains
Remove pot from heat and
dissolve:
8 lbs. Golden Light DME (late
addition)
Add bittering hops and bring to
boil for one hour
2 oz. Summit Hops (60 min)
(18.1% alpha acid)
Add intermediate boiling hops and
boil an additional 15 minutes
2 oz. Centennial Hops (30 min)
(9.5% alpha acid)
Add remaining fermentable sugars
and boil an additional 10 minutes
1 gallon water
6 lbs. Amber Dry Malt Extract
Add finishing hops and boil 5
minutes
2 oz. Cascade Hops (5 min)
(6.9% alpha acid)
Cool to 80°F and dilute to 5
gallons
Pitch yeast (November 18, 2007)
Ferment 3 weeks
Racked into clean carboy for
secondary fermentation (December
09, 2007)
Secondary fermentation and
conditioning for seven (7) months
Bottle (August 11, 2008)
5 ounces priming sugar for
carbonation
Bottle condition
note:
I did not dry hop as the original recipe suggested because I
just wanted a barley wine - not a brown imperial IPA.
Carnallite is a salt mineral that
forms by evaporation of sea water. Its composition is that
of a (hydrated) potassium magnesium chloride, making it one of the
"bitter" salts - so named for its very bitter taste. IPAs
are characterized by a lot of hops. Hops give beer its
bitter taste, thus the name of this beer: Carnallite IPA.
I'm a sucker for a citrusy IPA and my beer stock was getting low,
so I tried Northern Brewer's Three Hearted IPA kit. I
doubled the water in the boil to better extract the alpha acids,
etc. from the hops.
3 gallons cold water
Crush
1 lbs. Briess Caramel 40
Heat to 170°F
Remove grains
Remove pot from heat and
dissolve:
9.15 lbs. Gold Malt Syrup
1 oz. Centennial (60 min)
Boil 40 minutes
Add intermediate hops
1 oz. Centennial (20 min)
Boil 15 additional minutes
Add finishing hops
2 oz. Centennial (5 min)
Boil 5 minutes
Cool to 80°F and dilute to 5
gallons
Pitch yeast (November 11, 2007)
Wyeast #1084 Irish Ale Yeast
Ferment one (1) week
Transfer into secondary fermentor
(November 18, 2007)
Kutztown University
Administrators, in all their Machiavellian skulduggery, have
demanded that the Early Learning Center - the university's
learning laboratory in which future teachers are given actual
experience working with young children - find external funding, or
be eliminated. As a science professor who strongly believes
in the value of practical experience and laboratory education, I
see this as a very troubling development.
College students, parents of small children, faculty, and
concerned community members joined forces to stave off the initial
attack, but we must still raise funds externally to help support
the lab. The F.E.L.C. (Friends
of the Early Learning Center) is a non-profit
organization created to raise those funds. I made this batch
of beer, as well as the Irish Draught, for auction at a fundraiser
for the F.E.L.C.
This was a fun experiment I did with
some dear friends.
There were a lot of variations in this experiment, so I summarized
it all on a separate
apple
cider experiment website.
There's a wild hops plant that grows
near the science building at Kutztown University. I used a
generic IPA (India Pale Ale) recipe with some of the fresh hops
from that plant to see how it bitters and what aromas it
adds.
3 gallons of water
2 oz. fresh hops from wild plant
(frozen for a week while I was away on a field trip with my
petrology students)
boil hops tea 30 minutes
0.5 oz. fresh hops from wild
plant
boil hops tea another 30
minutes
strain hops tea (developed very
red color!)
cool to 180°F
2.25 oz. Carapils malt grains
2 oz. Breiss Victory (6 row) malt
grains
crush specialty grains and put
in "tea bag"
stew specialty grains 10
minutes (cools to 160°F)
3 lbs. Muntons plain amber dry
spray malt extract
dissolve malt extract
bring to boil and hold boil 5
minutes
1 oz. fresh hops from wild plant
(in cheese cloth "tea bag")
steep finishing hops 5 minutes
cool and transfer to fermentor
1 pkg. Safale S-04 dried ale
yeast
pitch yeast and ferment
Original Gravity = 1.06
Final Gravity = 1.02 results: a very mild pale ale
because the wild hops had a low alpha acid content - overall,
not bad!
This is a Russian drink that I've never
tasted. I've always wanted to visit Russia (they have some
extraordinary geology and most Russians that I've met have been
excellent people). It looks like a Belgian fruit
lambic, but using rye malt instead of barley malt.
I guess since I don't know how kvass should taste, I won't know if I mess this up -
I can't lose!
Many of the recipes I've found use rye bread as a major
ingredient, and others just list the ingredients found in rye
bread (i.e., rye, honey/sugar, yeast). I don't have a
surplus of rye bread, so I made mine using malted rye grains.
I took a raspberry kvass recipe from Rodney
Valdez's
kvass website and modified it slightly by using pectic
enzyme to optimize the fruit utilization and by trying to mash the
rye malt.
In a covered bucket, mix
1.6 lbs. of raspberries
1 lb. raisins
0.5 tsp. pectic enzyme
1 crushed camden tablet
Stir every 8 hours for three days
(it's just like a simple stomach digesting food, but only
breaks down cell walls instead of complete digestion)
After two days, put fruit mix
briefly through blender (this might be a mistake - we'll see)
Crush and mash at 150°F in 0.5
gallons water for 1 hour
1.5 lbs. rye malt (in grain
bag)
Drain grains, keeping the liquid
in a boiling pot
Add another 0.5 gallons water to
grains and mash for another 30 minutes
Rinse grains with another 0.5
gallons water, collecting all liquid in the boiling pot, and
discard grains (note: mashing was incomplete according to
iodine test, but wort is quite sweet and sticky)
Bring wort to rolling boil for 30
minutes, then add
0.5 lb. extra light dry malt
extract
1 lb. of honey
Bring back to rolling boil for 20
minutes, then add fruit matter
Bring back to boil, then cool to
90°F and add:
1 package Safale S-04 ale yeast
Ferment in airlocked carboy
(total liquid + fruit matter = 2.3 gallons)
Prime with 0.25 cups corn sugar
in 2 cups water and bottle
notes: malted rye mashed OK -
keeping the mash thick resulted in a gravy-like mash liquid (high
protein?)
Fermentation of fruit gives strong wine taste.
American pale ales are rich in hop
flavor - especially hops that give the beer a citrus-like
flavor. Pale ales have the color similar to the mineral
ferrimolybdite - a hydrous iron molybdate (Fe3+2(MoO4)3·8(H2O))
that forms by weathering of molybdenum ores.
This recipe is from Charlie
Papazian's book The
New Complete Joy of Home Brewing. It's called Amaizing
Pale Ale because in uses corn starch (maize)
in addition to the normal malted barley. Starch, remember,
is broken down by enzymes to make the sugars that the yeast eat
during fermentation. Adding pure corn starch will add food
for the yeast, but not add the other flavors we get from the
starches in the malt. Pale ales (and India pale ales) are
characterized by having a strong hops flavor relative to the malt
flavor. In sports, you win by a combination of increasing
your score and preventing the other person from increasing
his/hers. I want the hops flavor to win in this brew, so I
want to increase my "hops points" and prevent too many "malt
points." Alright, so it's not a great analogy, but I hope
you get the point.
This beer has the name Fiasco because I botched the job.
Distracted by ... I don't even remember what..., I accidentally
allowed the mash to heat to a boil. I caught it just as it
started to boil and immediately tried to cool it using ice and by
setting the pot outside (it was a windy day with temperatures
around 15°F - 20°F (-8°C) so things cooled quickly). Getting
the mash too hot can damage the natural enzymes that chemically
convert starches in the grains into sugars that the yeast can
eat/ferment. I let the mash rest at 155°F for six hours,
then overnight wrapped in towels, but I failed to completely
convert the starches to sugar. We'll see what happens!
crush and mash (first with 1 hour
120ºF protein rest, then incomplete mashing at 150-155ºF for
6+ hours because accidentally brought to boil - the fiasco!):
3.5 pounds malted barley (6 row
high enzyme)
0.5 pounds crystal malt
0.5 pounds corn starch
0.5 tsp gypsum
in a separate pan, mix and boil
2 cups water
0.25 cups corn sugar
0.25 tsp. yeast nutrient
cool in 0.5 gallon carboy and
add
1 pkg ale yeast
airlock and allow to ferment 24
hours
sparge grains, diluting to 2.5
gallons, and add
0.8 oz Willamette hops
(bittering / boiling)
boil 60 minutes
turn heat off and add
0.25 oz Hallertauer hops (aroma
/ finishing)
cover and place boiling pot
outside (air temperature 20°F) for 2 hours (cools enough so
that it won't kill the yeast)
strain, and rack into carboy,
adding yeast starter (see above)
ferment 14 days (7 days primary +
7 days secondary)
boil 2 cups water with
0.5 cups priming sugar for
carbonating
add carbonating sugar to beer and
bottle
note: Fermentation was aggressively
successful for several days, so a lot of starch must have been
converted, even though the mash failed the iodine test.
Result: another relatively
light beer, but hoppier.
Different parts of the world developed
different fermented drinks, depending on what materials were
available in the region. In Malaysia, the Caribbean Islands,
and other similar places, sugar cane supplies the sugar for
fermentation. Once fermentation is complete, the sugar cane
wine (fermented vesou) is
then
carefully
heated
so
that
the
alcohol
boils
off
into
a
condenser.
The
condenser
is
just
a
container
that
catches
and
cools
the
alcohol
vapor
until
the
vapor
condenses
back
into
a
liquid.
The
process
of
separating
the
alcohol
out of the wine is called distillation
(you may have heard of a stillfor making moonshine...).
Distilled vesou is called rum. Distilling alcohol is a dangerousprocedure, not only because you're dealing with flammable
vapors, but because the temperatures must be very carefully
controlled so that you don't also boil poisonous
wood grain alcohol (methanol) with the drinking alcohol
(ethanol). I personally have absolutely no interest in
distilled liquor, though, so I only want to make the wine. I
didn't have a recipe, so I just boiled typical gingerbread cookie
ingredients together! Maybe it'll be good for the holidays!
Boil the following for 30 minutes
1.5 cups blackstrap molasses
6 cups water
0.25 cups honey
0.25 tsp powdered cinnamon
dash powdered all spice
dash powdered nutmeg
dash powdered ginger
Transfer to 0.5 gallon carboy and
cool in ice bath
Add 1 package Safale ale yeast
Airlock carboy and wait
Lesson I learned from this
experiment: Whew!
Now I understand why they don't sell this stuff in stores and
why it's always distilled to make rum! All of the
sweetness was taken out by fermentation, so only the stark black
molasses flavor remained. I imagine that licking the
greasy residue from a dripping newspaper printing press might
taste about like this. Definitely bad stuff!
This is my first full mash beer.
It actually turned out pretty good. The description in the
recipe was spot-on -- it is a beer that would be great served ice
cold after a hard, hot day working in the mines or factories.
Home brewed beer recipes come in three varieties: 1) extract
recipes, 2) partial mash recipes (e.g., "#2 - denominator einzel
bok"), and 3) full mash recipes.
Fermentation of beer occurs when specific types of yeast (either Saccharomyces cerevisiae or Saccharomyces carlsbergensis)
eat sugar and excrete alcohol + carbon dioxide (CO2).
In beer, the sugar we feed these yeast comes from grain.
Similarly, the sugar in wine comes from the fruit. Grain,
however, contains mostly starches, which are chemically similar to
sugars (starches are molecules made of several sugar molecules
stuck together), but which yeast cannot digest. Therefore,
before we can use grain to make beer, we need to break the starch
molecules down into their component sugars. Think of it as
breaking up a chain by separating each link from the others.
Sugars are like links in the chain that is a starch
molecule. This process of breaking starches down into sugars
is called mashing. The three types of beer recipes are:
Extract recipes use malt
syrup that is extracted from malted barley and sold in
cans/jars/etc. These are the easiest to make because
experts do the hard work of mashing fermentable sugars from
starches in the malted barley.
Partial mash recipes use some
malt syrup, but also require the home brewer to extract about
half of the fermentable sugars from grains (a process called
"mashing").
Full mash recipes don't use
malt syrup at all - the home brewer must extract all of the
fermentable malt sugars from the malted barley.
I picked a mild English ale for this
experiment because it sounded quick and relatively easy - two good
things when doing something the first time! :-)
At bottling, this had a full, malty flavor (SG down to 1.01 from
an original 1.06), with a light hops accent.
Make yeast starter
White Labs British Ale Yeast
(#WLP005)
900 ml water
0.25 tsp yeast nutrient
0.5 cup corn sugar
Ferment yeast starter 24 hours in
0.5 gallon carboy
Crush grains
6.5 lbs. Munton’s Mild Ale Malt
(lovibond 2.5)
1 lb. 6 oz Breiss 10L crystal
malt (6 row)
Step mash crushed grains at 122,
145, 152, and 159°F (until passed the iodine test)
Sparge with hot water until
gallon of runoff reaches specific gravity = 1.010
Add boiling hops and boil 90
minutes
1.2 oz Willamette hops (5%
alpha acids = 6AAU)
Add finishing hops and boil 5
minutes
0.5 oz Goldings hops
(finishing)
Strain and dilute wort to 4
gallons with cold water (original recipe dilutes to 5 gallons,
but that seemed awfully light to me - I stopped at OG
[original gravity] = 1.06 so I won't really have a true mild ale [yeah, I
chickened out])
Cool to 70°F
Add ("pitch") yeast starter
Ferment 5 days at 24°C (75°F)
Transfer (rack) to secondary
carboy
Prime with dried malt extract and
bottle
Result: very drinkable
and smooth, pretty full-bodied (due to an imperfect mashing?
passed the iodine test!), lower hops bitterness and aroma than I
personally like, but other people like it, so.... success!
It'll be good served very cold on a hot day.
Mantle Plume Mulberry
Wine #2
My alternate take on my first try at
wine - probably a botched job, but we'll see - something to drink
after you've had a bunch of the other stuff! This wine was
made from the juice liberated from the pulp of the squeezed
mulberries using pectic enzyme to break down the plant cell
walls. I sterilized the berries with camden tablets before
stewing the pulp with pectic enzyme for seven days. I failed
to add the Saccharomyces
cerevisiae (wine yeast) on the second day, waiting
instead until the seventh. This may mean that I rotted my
berries in a very efficient manner. They didn't smell sour,
though, so I went ahead anyway. I imagine this would be a
popular drink in a post-apocalyptic wasteland a la Mad Max - Road Warrior,
or perhaps more properly the "Rowdy" Roddy Piper classic, Hell Comes toFrogtown.
Mohorovičić Mulberry Wine #1
My first try at wine - weird
stuff! This one will be something more to drink from a
pewter goblet than a champagne glass. This wine was made
from the squeezed juice of the mulberries.
The wine stopped fermenting after a few weeks, so I sampled it,
found it to be Death-Valley-bone-dry and so I added more sugar ...
a lot of sugar ... probably too
much sugar. The wine stopped fermenting again
after another week, so I sampled that - now it's a very sweet wine
that you can definitely feel going down, so I think it's just
maxed out (the yeast have generated alcohol until the
concentration is too high for them to eat, breed, and be merry, so
they've become dormant). I'll let it mature in the carboy
for another month or so before bottling. I don't plan on
drinking this for another year.
This is another high gravity
beer. I'm just curious what this style would taste like, so
I'm just doing a quick kit from Northern Brewer. More on
that later. It takes at least a full year to mature!
0.5 lbs. Dingemans Special B
0.5 lbs. Dingemans Biscuit
6 lbs. Gold Malt Syrup
6 lbs. Dark Malt Syrup
1 oz. Target (60 min)
1 oz. Cascade (30 min)
1 oz. Fuggle (1 min)
Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast
The brewing process for this was very
straight forward. (Make yeast starter, steep specialty
grains, add extract syrup and boil, adding different hops at
appropriate times, dilute, pitch yeast, ferment, and ultimately
bottle.)
I diluted to total only 4 gallons instead of 5 gallons in order to
really boost the specific gravity. note:
this beer has matured very well - sweet and bitter, with a nice
dark ale flavor!
India Pale Ales
are strong beers with a very strong hops flavor. A Double I.P.A.
is simply a double-strength version with twice as much malt and
twice as much hops. Such beers are known as "high gravity"
beers because they contain a lot of sugar from the malted barley,
which raises the specific
gravity (i.e., how heavy something is for its size) of
the unfermented beer. Beers that have such a high
concentration of fermentable malt sugar need to ferment and mature
for longer periods of time - at least four to six months - or up
to a year for some beers. This batch is a very slight
variation on an extract kit from Northern Brewer. Note the
many varieties and abundance of hops, and the large amount of malt
syrup.
0.75 lbs. Dingemans Caramel Pils
0.25 lbs. Briess Caramel 120
12 lbs. Pale Malt Syrup
1 oz. Yakima Magnum Hops (60 min)
1 oz. Liberty Hops (30 min)
1 oz. Yakima Magnum Hops (10 min)
2 oz. Northern Brewer Hops (Leaf)
(0 min)
1 oz. Cascade Hops (dry hop)
Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast
The brewing process is more
complicated due to the huge "bill" of hops. To extract the
most alpha acids and flavor possible from the hops, the hops are
brewed separately in a tea (Yakima Magnum and Liberty hops), then
added to the wort. A second batch of hops (Northern Brewer
hops) is added during the cooling of the wort before adding the
yeast. And a third dose of hops will be added after a couple
weeks of fermentation (Cascade hops added by dry hopping).
Finally, to maximize the gravity, I diluted to only four gallons
instead of the normal five. Based on the taste when I
bottled this stuff, this one's going to be really great in a few
months!
Result: Very good stuff! Both
bitter and sweet at the same time. Clears ones throat on
the way down, as well. I'll work on increasing the aroma
hops finish more in the future. Definite success!!!
note: this beer has
continued to mature extremely well - very sweet, quite bitter,
very excellent flavor!
malted barley (which provides
sugar to feed the fermenting yeast and the foundation flavor)
yeast (to ferment the sugar)
hops (to help preserve the beer
and provide both bitterness and fruity flavors), and
water (chemical reactions need a
solvent so molecules and ions can move around and interact)
In order to better understand the
different flavors and aromas derived from different types of hops,
I tried making six variations on a very simple pale ale - thus the
name "Plagioclase Pale Ale" (plagioclase is a type of feldspar
mineral that has a variety of chemical compositions ranging from
CaAl2Si2O8 to NaAlSi3O8
- when minerals have a variety of compositions, we say it displays
a solid solution.
Technically, this experiment is more similar to the chemical
variation in hexagonal carbonate minerals because there are so
many "end members," but "Hexagonal Carbonate Pale Ale" didn't
sound as catchy).
In order to limit the flavors from different kinds of malt, I used
only Munton's extra light dry malt extract because it is a good,
general-purpose malt without strong overtones. I've read
somewhere that dry extract has a greater consistency because it
lacks water and so does not experience chemical reactions that a
syrup might. I chose to go with extract because it's easier
and consistent. I chose 7 pounds because I like a little
kick to my beer - after all, if these don't taste great, well,
maybe the alcohol might make them go down smoother - a sort of
candy coating.
For bittering, I chose to use 1 ounce galena hops
(typical alpha 11%) to get approximately 38 IBU. I chose
galena hops because it is known to be a very mellow high alpha
acid boiling hops and because it is named after geologic
mineral (although I hope there is no lead
sulfide in the hops!) The choice probably didn't
matter much since I intended to boil it for 75 minutes, which
would drive off any of the flavors and aromas of the galena
hops. Alpha acids act to give beer a bitter flavor and help
preserve it - boiling is required to make those alpha acids
dissolve in the water (a process called isomerization). The flavors and aromas of
hops boil off easily, so flavoring hops will have to be added very
late in the process.
To make sure the main body of the beer (called the wort) was the same for all
six batches, I fermented the malt (with boiled galena hops) all in
one container. All six batches thus had exactly the same
type and concentration of malt, bittering hops, and yeast. I
fermented the wort in the dark for six days at 16°C (60°F) , by
which time the bubbling had slowed almost to a stop. The
fermentation temperature was simply the temperature of our
basement.
The wort appeared to be stratified when it was time to split it up
into the six individual test batches, so I first siphoned the wort
into a large, clean carboy to homogenize the liquid. When I
was convinced the wort was consistent throughout, I siphoned it
into six small (half gallon) carboys.
I wanted a pretty strong hops flavor so that I'd be sure to tell
the difference between the different varieties, so I added an
eighth (0.125) ounce of aroma (finishing) hops to each half-gallon
carboy (adding aroma hops directly to the beer while it's
fermenting without first boiling it is called dry hopping). I chose
the following hops varieties after a bit of reading about their
qualities.
Cascade
Chinook
East Kent Goldings
Fuggle
Northern Brewer
Target
I had two gallons of wort left over,
so I just dry hopped it with a quarter (0.25) ounce of the East
Kent Goldings (because it was described as a classic English ale
hops).
I then airlocked the little carboys and continued fermentation at
16°C (60°F) until fermentation stopped. Transferring wort
from one carboy to another during fermentation is called secondary
fermentation. Secondary fermentation allows the brewer to
remove some of the nasty skunge that accumulates on the bottom of
the fermentor that can add bad flavors to the beer. The hops
floated for first day, but much sank by end of second day.
The East Kent Goldings was not cloudy like other five batches
(although all fermented actively).
When all of the carboys were done fermenting, I bottled each and
waited. On April 16, I had a few friends over for the big
taste test!
What I
learned: Different
hops have very different flavors and aromas! It is
difficult to describe each flavor in words, but they differed in
the strength of their aromas, the strength and characteristic of
their flavors, the aftertaste, and the degree to which they
accented or masked bitterness. Some had a juniper
bush-like taste, others a grapefruit taste, and still others had
flavors described as like paint, barf, spruce trees, etc.
I'd like to run samples of these through the gas
chromatograph to see
which compounds dominated in each hops variety. Finally,
definitely use less hops when dry-hopping - some variants were
pretty overpowering!
Scottish
Wee Heavy (#7)
Result: Strongly recommend this kit - it
took a while to mature, but definitely became many people's
favorite!
Biotite
Brown Ale (#6)
Result: OK,
but not very well balanced. Huge body, but nutiness
isn't up to expectations.
Bedrock Bock (#42)
Unconsolidated
India Pale Ale (#41) 
Geology
Amber Ale - quick extract batch to teach some young people how
to brew (#40)
Dry Irish Stout -
Inselberg Irish
Stout (#32)
Microcline Scottish 80
Shilling Ale - All Grain Scottish Ale
(#31)
The gridded pattern in some of the grains in
this microscope view of granite is due to twinning - a special
type of crystal intergrowth that is characteristic of the mineral
microcline. The slang term for this type of twinning is "Tartan
Plaid" twinning.
This is an all grain recipe so
really warmed the house when I made it. It's matured into a
truly outstanding beer - one of my all time favorites!
Brewed January 24, 2010
Bokite
Marine geologist Adrienne Oakley
and paleoclimatologist Chris Bochicchio came over to learn to
brew. They did most of the work on this one, but I'm fine
with taking part of the credit. Since Adrienne is so fond of
oceanographic research, this beer is named after another woman of
the sea - Rachel
Wall (see
also here and here
and here).
It was a nice afternoon project to do with my
friends Sarah
and Mike. Life doesn't get much better than time with close
friends and family! :-)
The mash went very well - complete conversion
according to the iodine
test for starch.
Further reading about fossils in amber:
The Deccan Traps are a very thick
accumulation of basaltic lava flows in west central India.
Hot, gooey lava flow after lava flow poured out of the earth
roughly 65 million years ago. 
note: this is a very
popular beer! This stuff is going fast!
This is my first attempt at an all-grain
Imperial IPA (i.e., made without using malt extract - just grains
and water). 
This is a little project for the book club -
another extract kit to introduce people to the process.
Another batch of home brew for a
good cause (i.e., the Early Learning Center).
Kutztown University
Administrators, in all their Machiavellian skulduggery, have
demanded that the Early Learning Center - the university's
learning laboratory in which future teachers are given actual
experience working with young children - find external funding, or
be eliminated. As a science professor who strongly believes
in the value of practical experience and laboratory education, I
see this as a very troubling development.
This is a Russian drink that I've never
tasted. I've always wanted to visit Russia (they have some
extraordinary geology and most Russians that I've met have been
excellent people). It looks like a Belgian fruit
lambic, but using rye malt instead of barley malt.
In a covered bucket, mix
Fiasco
Ferrimolybdite Pale Ale (#12)
Different parts of the world developed
different fermented drinks, depending on what materials were
available in the region. In Malaysia, the Caribbean Islands,
and other similar places, sugar cane supplies the sugar for
fermentation. Once fermentation is complete, the sugar cane
wine (fermented vesou) is
then
carefully
heated
so
that
the
alcohol
boils
off
into
a
condenser.
The
condenser
is
just
a
container
that
catches
and
cools
the
alcohol
vapor
until
the
vapor
condenses
back
into
a
liquid.
The
process
of
separating
the
alcohol
out of the wine is called distillation
(you may have heard of a still for making moonshine...).
Distilled vesou is called rum. Distilling alcohol is a dangerous
procedure, not only because you're dealing with flammable
vapors, but because the temperatures must be very carefully
controlled so that you don't also boil poisonous
wood grain alcohol (methanol) with the drinking alcohol
(ethanol). I personally have absolutely no interest in
distilled liquor, though, so I only want to make the wine. I
didn't have a recipe, so I just boiled typical gingerbread cookie
ingredients together! Maybe it'll be good for the holidays!
For bittering, I chose to use 1 ounce galena hops
(typical alpha 11%) to get approximately 38 IBU. I chose
galena hops because it is known to be a very mellow high alpha
acid boiling hops and because it is named after geologic
mineral (although I hope there is no lead
sulfide in the hops!) The choice probably didn't
matter much since I intended to boil it for 75 minutes, which
would drive off any of the flavors and aromas of the galena
hops. Alpha acids act to give beer a bitter flavor and help
preserve it - boiling is required to make those alpha acids
dissolve in the water (a process called isomerization). The flavors and aromas of
hops boil off easily, so flavoring hops will have to be added very
late in the process.
