IPA and Brown Ale

Sunday night we bottled our newest IPA and it came out a better color than our first IPA. The darker carmel malt gave the beer the richer copper color we were looking for. First taste was good, a nice sweetness balanced by the bitterness from all the hops we added, and it should turn out better than the first. Elise's brown ale is ready, and it tastes good. Elise would like it to be more malty, but for writing the recipe herself, it is a very good first attempt. The dry hopping added a nice hop aroma, and I think we will definately experiment more with dry hopping in the future. Depending on the time of day and day of week that you ask her, she either likes the color or thinks that it isn't dark enough; but I think that it is a very good color for an american brown ale. In a couple of weeks when the IPA is ready, we will have a pretty decent supply of beer to drink with the Stout, Brown, and IPA available. We are still a month away though, from cracking open the Winter Beer, but that time should help the spice flavors in the beer mellow and round out the beer.

First Taste of Our Winter Warmer

We have finally bottled the Winter Warmer, and had the opportunity to taste it for the first time. This is the first recipe that we made ourselves, and I have to say we are extremely pleased with the results (even without the carbonation). It is our strongest beer we have made so far at 8% ABV. It is dark amber in color, a perfect color for the winter season. The spices are a great addition to the beer, adding just enough spice profile without over powering the beer. Our goal was to create a beer that truly captured the flavors of the Christmas season, and we really hit the nail on the head with this one. We can't wait to crack our first one open on Thanksgiving!

Cheers!

High Krausen

So yeast starter is fermenting so well, that the krausen has spilled out of the airlock. We haven't had anything close to this yet, so I guess the yeast in the starter was pretty healthy. I have heard people say top croppped yeast are like "super yeast" and now I know what they mean.

IPA

We successfully brewed an IPA today that I wrote the recipe for myself. For most of the beers that we had made, the actual color has been turning out much lighter than estimated by our brewing programs. So for this one, I purposefully tried to make it darker than a "traditional" IPA. Normal ranges for IPAs are about 7-10 SRM. This one was estimated to be about 11.6 SRM. Not much darker, but hopefully it turns out to be a nice deep amber color. We also had 3 hop addtions with a total of 4 ounces used. Chinook, Cascade, and Willamette were used during the boil, and after fermentation we are going to dry hop with 1 oz of Cascade as well. We have also intentionally tried to make a higher alcohol beer, and this one should be around 6.6% if everything goes well.

As for using the yeast starter, we pitched today at ~1pm, and as of 730pm, there is already some activity in the airlock. Usually it takes between 12-24hrs to start seeing activity, so the yeast starter has really taken off in the beer and should make for a full and well attenuated beer.



love and hoppyness

Top Cropping and Yeast Starters

With the brown ale, we fermented it in a bucket in order to try a yeast recycling technique called "Top Cropping." With ale yeast, during fermentation, they gather on top of the beer and form a foam called krausen. So, after about 24 hours of active fermentation, I went an scraped some of the yeast off the top of beer and put it into a mason jar and after a few days in the fridge, the yeast had settled out of the liquid. You can save the yeast in the fridge for up to 6 months, as long as you make a starter before you pitch it again.

For the IPA that we are going to brew on Saturday, we are going to use the yeast that came from the brown. To do this we must make a starter to grow and "wake up" the yeast to ensure viability and proper pitching rates in number of yeast cells. Each normal gravity beer needs about 200 billion yeast cells in order to ferment sufficiently. A small batch of beer (OG 1.030-1.040) is made using dry malt extract and about 2L of water. Once the wort has cooled, I transferred the yeast from the mason jar into the growler with the fresh wort. After about 20 hours, you get a nice fermentation and krausen (above, you can see the krausen on top), and on Saturday we will simply pitch the whole growler into the wort to provide the yeast. For our first attempt at top cropping and making a starter, everything is turning out well so far, but we won't know for sure how viable the yeast are until we see how they react in the IPA.

This top cropping method is very useful in situations where unique yeast strains are used, such as Belgian and Irish ale strains. Normal, all around, dry yeast cost about $3/batch of beer. The unique strains come as a liquid and range anywhere from $7-9/batch. So top cropping and reusing these strains for future use will save a good amount of money in the long run.