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.

Tasting: IPA

Big up's to Eric for getting me the custom pint glasses in the picture above. They say "Rowdy Reptile Brewing, Since 2009" which is very cool. I received 2 glasses and a big glass pitcher as groomsman gifts for his wedding. Thanks to Eric and congratulations.

As for the tasting today, I am writing about our second attempt at an IPA.

Brewed: 2/21/2011
OG: 1066
FG: 1011
Alcohol: 7.2%
Hops: Magnum, Centennial, Columbus, Amarillo, Chinook

Aroma: Bright fruity and floral hop aroma, very nice; slight alcohol; some breadiness from the malts.

Appearance: slightly lighter than in the picture, but the color is somewhat "dull" as it's not very bright. The brew is decently clear once it warms up, but I would like it to be clearer. The cloudiness may be due to the dry hopping, and we'll try cold crashing longer next time.

Flavor: Very citrusy but not as bitter as the estimated 85 IBUs would suggest. The bittering hop we used (magnum) is known for being a very "clean" bittering hop, and as a result may not give that "hop bite" that we like. The brew does hide its 7.2% alcohol well as it has a good drinkability, but it does not have the crispness I want.

Overall: This is just a 'meh' beer for me. I dont know if it is because of the magnum hops we used, or our palates being used to super bitter beers, but this one almost tastes like a Pale Ale instead of an IPA. Unfortunately Elise has not been able to try this one so I cant get her input, but after this somewhat disappointing batch, I think I am going to take a break from brewing origonal IPA recipes and instead brew other people's tried and true recipes. We used a lot of hops in this beer (7 oz) and it should be much hoppier/bitter than it is, but again, I dont know if our palates are just ruined. Our neighbor seems to like it though, so that is a plus.


We probably wont brew an IPA for a while as the upcoming list is Dubbel, Schwarzbier, and Doppelbock. The schwarz and doppelbock are lagers and the doppelbock will need to be lagered in our fridge for 6-12 weeks before we bottle it so we are planning on brewing this about a month before Cooper arrives so that it can lager while we are busy adjusting to our new house guest. We might try to squeeze another brew in there somewhere, but if we do it is likely to be either our Black 'N Mild or the porter. We'll see.

First Snow

I am off from school for about 2 weeks until I start rotations and with nothing to do anymore, I decided today would be a good day to brew our First Snow Winter Ale. This one will be aged and will not be opened until the first time it snows in Denver; usually sometime around Halloween-ish. Another spin we are going to put on it will be oaking some of it, probably ~2 gallons, in honor of Cooper. Back in the day, people were named for their profession. Smith's were generally blacksmiths for example, and Cooper's were (and still are) barrel makers. In honor of his cool name, and because we dont have a barrel, we are going to add oak chips to this beer. The beer will sit on the oak for about 2 weeks before bottling and will add another dimension to the beer. The beer is going to be pretty strong as indicated by the OG (pic above) of ~1.099. If everything goes well it should end up at ~9.7% alcohol. Different from last year will be the yeast we use. Last year we used a British strain of yeast that is pretty fruity, but does not attenuate as well. It did a good job last year and the beer was very tasty, but I thought this year we would change it up a littel bit. We are using a California Lager yeast (think Anchor Steam) that ferments very clean like lager yeasts, but can be used at warmer temperatures (58-60 instead of 45). By doing this we will be making something closer to a Baltic Porter which is very similar to a Russian Imperial Stout but made with lager yeast. They were made origonally made in Northern Europe and were strong beers made to last trips through the Baltic Sea. Hopefully ours turns out well



This was the first batch of beer in a while that has had a significant amount of specialty grains; the Tripel was only base malt for example. As a result, the mash smelled very very good this morning. I was trying to mash in before Elise left so she could smell it on her way out, but the water wasnt warm enough yet, so I missed her by about 20 minutes. This batch also had 1.63 lbs of oats in it which should impart an nice creamy mouthfeel; some of the other specialty grains included chocolate, vienna, caramel, buiscit, special roast, and brown malt.




The beer had a nice deep brown color as can be seen here in the first runnings from the mash tun.

This is a picture of what they dogs typically are doing during the brew day. Riley is looking into the grass for rabbits and Bailey is usually just lounging around. You can click on the photo to get a better look at Bailey side-eying me

The dogs usually get a small amount of the spent grain to munch on while we are brewing as well.

Recently, we found a recipe online for dog treats made from the spent grain. Its 4 cups of grain, 2 cups of flour, 2 eggs, and 1 cup of peanut butter. They are kind of like drop cookies and will spend a few hours in the oven on a low temp to dry out. We made some from the grain of the Tripel and the dogs seemed to like them, but I think they will like these ones more as the specialty grains will provide more sweetness to the cookies.

Single Hop Pale Ale: Centennial v Cascade

Today while I was off from school for a day I brewed 5 gallons of pale ale in which it was split into two batches. The first one was made with only centennial hops and the second was with only cascade hops. To try to make everything else the same except for the hops, I only did one mash. After all of the worst was drained, I split it 50/50 and made each of the beers 1 at a time.

I usually dont do a mash out which is raising the grain temperature to above 170 with your sparge water which denatures all of the mash enzymes to "lock in" your fermentability. I did this today because the wort for the cascade brew sat for ~90 minutes while I was brewing the centennial batch. Hopeully, during this time, there wasnt any more conversion because it would make the beer more fermentable and different from the centennial version.

Each beer got ~30 IBUs of bittering at 60 minutes, then 0.33oz at 10 minutes and 0.66oz at 5 min; each will also get 0.5 oz worth of dry hops. Each beer should be about the same IBUs (~50) which will allow us to compare the flavor/aroma of the hops to eachother without having differing levels of bitterness. Whenever we get around to the next series of Single Hops we are probably going to do Columbus and Chinook followed then by Simcoe and Amarillo.