India Pale Ale - quick
extract batch to teach some proto-alumni how to brew (#41)
Bock - quick extract kit to
teach a forester friend how to brew (#40)
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.
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.
