Black IPA

Busy weekend, so this will be a short post. We've finally brewed the Black IPA again and hit numbers similar to last time. The original gravity was 1.070, which if it ferments as well as the last version, should result in about 7.2-7.5% alcohol. We used some of the yeast from the Double Pale Ale for the Black IPA and will save the rest for future brews. We are going to rush this one through a bit, similar to the Double Pale, and will hopefully be drinking it in about 3 weeks.

The Double Pale is sitting in the garage at 30 PSI and will stay there until tomorrow morning at which point I'll take it off the gas and then put it in the kegerator on Wednesday night. We dry hopped with an ounce of Citra and 0.5 oz of Chinook. We havent used Citra before so we are looking forward to seeing what kind of aromas we get out of that hop.

We also took a quick sample from the Raspberry RIS and have decided to let it go another 3-5 days before we bottle. I was going to finally get around to cleaning the keg that we stored the RIS in and discovered that there was a decent amount of beer still in there (I dont how we didnt get it out when we racked it to the carboy). When I found the beer I quickly put the lid back on the the keg and hit with CO2 to seal it. I am assuming it's still clean, and not infected, so when we bottle, I'll just add it to the rest of the beer that was on the raspberries. No plans yet for the next brew, but I'll bet we do something in 3-4 weeks.

Hop Update

The picture above is of the Centennial pot and as you can see, it is doing very well. We now have trained 4 bines on to the trellis, 2 of which were trained just yesterday. There is another bine growing that is becoming pretty long as well that I havent decided whether or not to prune it or just let it go up the trellis too. We added some basic fertilizer this morning and hopefully that will help with the leaves looking a bit discolored. So far not too many bugs either. I think I've seen a wooly aphid (?) but I've sprayed the underside of the leaves and the bine itself with a water/soap mixture and that seems to be working in keeping them away for now.

The Newport has also had a lot of growth since the last update. I think that the one bine (farthest right) is a little bit taller than the Centennial, which had about a 2 week headstart. There is only 2 bines on the trellis, which may be why they can grow so much faster, because the plant is only focused on 2, and not 4-5 bines. Either way, I'm pleased with the progess so far, and the Newport seems to not be attracting as many bugs as the Centennial. It's still a long summer, but hopefully both of the plants will make it through and give us some hops to use in the Fall.

Thankfully the Double Pale Ale was cold-crashed last night. On Saturday we'll dry hop/keg it and hopefully by the following Saturday we'll finally be drinking some beer on tap again. It seems like it's been a long time since the kegerator was in action, and hopefully, we wont run into this problem again in the future.

Raspberries and Empty Kegs

Bad news first: we're out of kegged beer.......We'll let that breath for a second.........

Ok. We're back: We were worreid it would happen and it did. With the hiatus in brewing because of the move, the lapse has finally caught up and our kegerator is empty. The brown went about 3 days ago and the Belgian went last night. Fortunately, we've got a decent amount of dubbels and rye saison's left to last, but only 6 steam beers and no hoppy beers. The Double Pale has been in primary for 1 week now and is probably finished fermenting. We'll let the yeast clean up after themselves for a few days and then we are planning on cold crashing on Wednesday this week. After 3 days at 38, we'll keg it and add dry hop with 1oz of Citra and 0.5 oz Chinook. We'll leave it at room temp for 4 days (normally I like 7, but we need to rush things), then into the kegerator, then hopefully by next Wednesday it will be close enough carbonation-wise to start drinking.

Now good news:

We've finally gotten around to adding the raspberries to our Russian Imperial Stout. I could not find the canned raspberry puree this year, so we got about 3 lbs of frozen raspberries and let them thaw in the fridge. We then put them in a half gallon of water and raised the temp to about 160 F to hopefully pseudo-pasteurize as well as mash them up a bit to get the juices flowing.

The beer is now sitting in the shower (the garage gets a little too hot during the day for my tastes) and will stay there for 7-10 days. We'll sample it after a week and then decide when to bottle. I think this year we might have to do something different than normal to avoid the overcarbonation problem we had last year. My guess was that the bottling yeast ate the sugars in the raspberries which resulted in the excess CO2. It looks like there is a small amount of bubbling going on now, which could mean a little bit of fermentation (which I doubt because the beer has sat so long the yeast are probably pretty dead) or its just some extra gas escaping.

Next up is the Black IPA a week from today and then probably the week after that we'll do the Saison. I dont have the ingredients but I think we should brew the Belgian Pale again as it seems to be a crowd pleaser.

Double Pale Ale & Hop Update

Yesterday we brewed our 3rd installment of the Double Pale Ale. Everything went pretty smoothly considering it has been about 3 months since we last made a beer. Having a hose around was definitely an improvement and allowed me to clean up outside instead of the kitchen, which Elise appreciates greatly. Unlike my last post said, I did actually brew just outside the garage instead of the back yard. I decided to stay in the garage because all of my equipment is right there and I can just bring the hose around the side of the house to where I need it. This side of the house is also a bit more shady and therefore cooler which doesnt hurt.

I wasnt sure how the change in elevation or humidity would effect our boil off rate, so I turned the burner up a little bit and ended up with 4.75 gallons instead of our normal 5. Other than that minor issue, our numbers were similar to previous versions of this beer which is nice to see as it means we are brewing consistent beers.

We haven't exactly decided when we are going to brew the Black IPA, my guess is probably the weekend before I start working. If that is the case we will probably be down to 1 beer on tap, or even 0 before the new beers are ready. During our graduation/baptism weekend with all of the guests in town we drank a lot of beer and killed the Schwarzbier and Double Pale and put considerable dents in the Brown and Belgian Pale Ale. I'm hoping we can have the Double Pale on tap before we completely run out, but it will be a few months before we've caught up again and have 3 beers on tap together.


I snapped a couple of shots of how the hops were progressing:

Above is the Newport. It is growing a bit slower than the Centennial (below), but it has 1 good bine going that in a week will probably be long enough to train on to the trellis.

The Centennial is growing very well so far and I have been able to train 2 bines on to the trellis. Once they were put on to the trellis they seemed to start growing even faster and they probably make a complete rotation every 1-2 days depending on how much sun they get. I have high hopes for the Centennial giving us at least a couple of ounces of hops to use in a beer, the Newport on the other hand may only give us a couple of cones. We'll see


#TeamDietrich

Aaaaaaand, we're back

We've officially made our first starter in North Carolina and Rowdy Reptile Brewing is back in business. We have a two-car garage, and next to the door going into the house is a cabinet/counter top that is a perfect spot for the stir plate. We set up our shelves to the left and can easily store all of our brew equipment on shelves. I dont think we will be brewing in the garage any more as we have a nice yard now so we'll be doing most of the brewing back there so the dogs can run around while we brew and we'll also have access to a hose. Our old place didnt have a hose, so we are very excited about how much easier it will be to brew with a hose instead of having to go up and down a flight of stairs for every drop of water we need.

On the other side of the door we set up the fermentation fridge and stacked our cases of empty bottles. The white board on top of the fridge was originally in our kitchen, but since we've gotten a bigger one, I am going to use this one as a "What's Fermenting" board. Now that we're in NC, we'll also have to start getting stickers from breweries here to add to the fridge and expand the collection.

Our first brew will be our Double Pale ale, but a little different from previous versions. The homebrew store here was out of Amarillo hops, so we will be dry hopping with a hop we havent used before called Citra. Shockingly, it has lots of citrus aspects, so it shouldn't be too different from Amarillo.

Since the homebrew store here is much smaller (and therefore the selection of grains is smaller) we've decided that we are going to plan more of our brews in advance and buy the ingredients online. The online place only does grain in 1 lb increments like the store, but it is a bit cheaper, and the hops are much much cheaper, so we will be able to make up the shipping costs there. We are looking into ways to store the small/random amounts of specialty grains that we will have left over, and I'm sure with the random assortment of grain/hops on hand, we'll inevitably do some "kitchen-sink style of beers."

So far we have planned for the Double Pale Ale later this week, then the Black IPA next week. After that we have ingredients for a schwarzbier, saison (with lemon zest, honey, and black pepper, yum!), dubbel (that we'll age on some figs from our fig tree), and a British-style porter for our Fall beer.