Stocking Up; Coop's Oaked First Snow

As Cooper is coming soon we are planning on taking a small brewing hiatus after his arrival until things settle down. To prepare for this we are stocking up on beer. We brewed a clone of Bell's Two Hearted Ale (an IPA), next week we'll brew the Black N Mild (hoppy, 4% beer), then bottle the dubbel (which attenuated a lot and is 7.7% alcohol instead of the anticipated 6.7%), then the next week we'll brew our Belgian Pale ale, and a couple weeks later finish with a porter. Above is a photo of our "Beer Store" in the garage. It is a closet that houses the A/C unit and the hot water heater but has a decent amount of floor space which we use for storage space. In the picture out of view on left is another 2 cases as well. In all, there are 13 cases in the closet (including the case of the First Snow we bottled today) and as such, we are running dangerously low on empty bottles. With all the brewing in the near future we'll likely have to buy empty bottles to make it over the hump. We've only had to buy 1 case of bottles in the past, and although they aren't expensive, it still is a pain to have to buy bottles when we usually get them for free from friends.


In previous posts we've mentioned oaking the First Snow brew in honor of Cooper. Today we added a medium-plus toast, American Oak spiral to 2 gallons of the beer and botteld the other 3 gallons. We are cutting it close to Coop's arrival in that the package for the spiral says it reaches maximum extraction in 6 weeks, and Coop should be here in about 10 weeks. We're going to taste the beer in ~2 weeks to see how it is progressing to see if we need to add more oak and hopefully we can bottled it in 4 weeks to allow 6 weeks for bottle conditioning and aging. Below is a photo of the spiral posing with Cooper.

Biere de Mars

We just finished bottling the Biere de Mars which was the Biere de Garde that was secondaried on top of the Brett B yeast. From the sample the aroma has a lot of the funky Brett characteristics, but the flavor of the Brett is very subdued; it should make for a very intersting beer.

On a side note, the Biere de Garde is actually pretty good. I have been bashing it for being so "simple" but that is turning out to be a good thing. We sampled another one last night and it was good; nicely sweet and light. On a hot summer day some cold BdG's would go down quite nicely; too bad we only bottled 10 of them........Next year we'll make a whole 5 gallons worth.

Belgian Dubbel

Today we had a smooth brew session and made close to 5 gallons of a Beglian Dubbel. This was one of the rare batches lately that I've done on a weekend and it was nice to have Elise and Cooper around to brew. The gravity came out a little higher than I wanted (1069 instead of 1063) which will mean probably another 0.5% worth of alcohol. We also made some dog treats from the spent grains as we are running low from the batch that was made from the First Snow grains.

On a side note, we tasted the first round of bottles from the Single Hop beers and, like Elise, I prefered the taste of the Centennial beer. I think that the Cascade version's body is a little thinner than the Centennial one because it was made second and therefore the wort sat around for ~2 hours before it came to a boil. Overall, it is a good pale ale, we like the color and clarity and it should be a good summer beer.

The dogs getting their usual ration of spent grains.

The rabbits have been out a lot lately and as it's Spring, the babies have been coming out as well.

Late Spring Update

I'm home from my rotation in Sterling and did a few things beer-related this weekend. We bottled the Single Hop Pale Ales (Cascade and Centennial) and I was suprised how similar the fermentation was for both beers. They both finished at 1012 for 6.4% alcohol, and although I think that's a little too high for an American Pale Ale (I'd prefer something closer to 5.5%) the samples tasted pretty good. We poured the samples into tasting glasses so we could try to smell the difference between the two, and to no one's surprise, we eached preferred different beers. Elise like the Centennial the best (which she said reminded her of her probably favorite beer, Great Divide's Hercules Double IPA) and I liked the Cascade beer.

We racked the First Snow to secondary where it will sit for ~2 weeks at which time we'll bottle 3 gallons of it and then put the other 2 gallons on some medium toast American Oak spirals. I was worried a couple of weeks ago when I took a gravity sample from the beer and it was only at 1040, but the extra couple of weeks allowed th yeast to finish up. It finished at 1022 which is lower than we anticipated, and brings the alcohol to 10.1%! The sample tasted very smooth, so I'm looking foward to drinking them this winter.

Next week we'll brew a Belgian Dubbel, and like our Tripel, we are using Westmalle's yeast. Like their Dubbel, ours is going to be a bit "smaller" than what most people think Dubbels should be. We're going to shoot for ~6.75% alcohol, hopefully a little less. As this was the last of the Belgian yeast we had left from the Belgian Pale Ale we brewed in December, we'll use this yeast cake to get our stores up again.

After that we are going to brew a clone of Bell's Two Hearted Ale, which is technically an IPA. In the last post I was bashing our IPA, but since then it has cleared up a lot and gotten pretty tasty, so it's not as bad as advertised. Irregardless, I still want to do a couple of "other people's" IPAs before we start down the road of making our own again. The interesting thing about the Two Hearted Ale is that it is very low in alcohol for an IPA (~6%) and it is all Centennial hops. Even though we just did an all-Centennial beer, this beer is just too good to pass up.