HomeBrew Wednesday # 1

Happy Home Brew Wednesday  

 

This will be my first home brew Wednesday blog post. Today I will talk about what I have been doing in the brewing world and some of my up grades in my home brew equipment.  

 

 

Back on January 10 one of my local breweries (Draft Line)  had an event called Brew and Chew.  As the Head brewer said " we will BREW some home brew and  CHEW on some brewing facts. There was around twenty homebrewers on hand. All brewing our own 5 to 10 gallon batches. I brewed a Pale Ale with all Nelson Sauvin hops and cultivated Wyeast 1272 from my last brew of ESB.  What a great brew day.

 

(in the center) Jamie McMillan , Draft Line Brewing head brewer
-Photo courtesy of Kellie Evans

 



A great angle of brewery with me in the middle with the hat on
-Photo courtesy of Kellie Evans-

Wort Chilling with an awesome immersion chiller.
-Photo courtesy of Kellie Evans-





Yeast starter cultivated from my ESB batch. (Wyeast 1272)
-Photo courtesy of Kellie Evans-

 

 

From the Brew and Chew I picked up a few techniques to bring my Brewing up to the next level. Up until that day I had only batch sparged, but from some of the other home brewers I was able to get some ideas on how to build a fly sparge system, which I used on my next brewday.

Diagrams for my fly sparge system

My Fly sparge system in action.

 

Brew today, See you Tomorrow. 

 



Contest Winning Brew / Double Axe Nano Brewery

Good Afternoon my fellow craft brew drinkers. I am working my way to the nano brewery level.  In my last post I brewed an End Of Summer Citra IPA. I entered that beer in a home brew competition at my local home brew shop, which I won third place.  Coming in behind second place an Oktoberfest and first place a Baltic Porter.

Here are some pictures from my last brew day. I brewed a Pumpkin ESB. 

Brew Today , See you Tomorrow

Citracada , The end of summer IPA

Citracada

The end of summer is near and here in North Carolina that means Cicadas. On this brew day I was brewing a Citra IPA. Here is my brew day in photos. 

Brew today See you tomorrow.

Belgian Brew Day

Belgian Abby Ale

OG 1.070

That is right I went all grain. Here is my brew day in pictures.

 

Brew today, See you tomorrow.

Fresh Citrusy IPA Brewday

Lately we have had some of the best tasting IPAs. Both brewed by  Lagunitas, Daytime IPA and Little sumpin' sumpin' a Wheat Pale ale. Both tasted so good and drank so easy I decided to brew my take on them. They were very fragrant of citrus and light pine and tasted just the same. I picked these hops to help drive it home.

1. Cascade 
2.  Centennial
3.  Simcoe
4. Citra

Here are some picture of the brew day.

Brew today, See you tomorrow.

The Unnamed One. Stout Porter.

Take a step back in time with me. Imagine we are in Ireland in the late 1700's and we want a dark strong beer. All the street and river porters are drinking these amazing looking beers. We ask one man what he is drinking and he says " Oh this is a Porter".

 So today I will brew a Stout Porter.  I used European grains  with the addition of Flaked Oats.  I did "Mericaize" it.  I use American Hops, Mount Hood pellet and Centennial whole leaf. 

Brew today, See you tomorrow.

Brew Day. I'm thinking 1610 Brown ale.

I got all my ingredients needed for my partial mash brew Brown ale, I got all my grains and DME from my local brew store, HomeSteaders Brew supply.  This being my third brew I wanted it to really work and taste like BEER.  My first batch was a Mr. BEER kit, Good to get my brewing passion going, but no good as far as beer. Next as you can see here  I brewed an all grain California Ale. I jumped right in to the deep end and could barely swim. My Cali. ale came out as beer, but was weak. It hardly fermented and tasted very young.

This time I...

This time I did a lot of watching youtube and after all of that I feel I have a good idea on how to brew.   I knew I wanted to brew a Brown Ale.  So I want to my local brew supply shop in town and picked up my LME, my barley grains, my hops, and my dry yeast.   My 1610 Brown Ale is ready to brew. I got the recipe from local brew supply shop, I told the owner what I was looking to brew and he helped me tweak the recipe to my liking. 

 

 After that...

After that it was time to brew .

Getting that right Temp. to pitch the yeast

That's it.

OG 1.065
Now it's in it's fermentation bucket and bubbling away.  

Bearfootdaddy brewing beer

I brewed my second batch of beer today, An American all grain Amber Ale. I have my Barley, Ten pounds of it, Just to make five gallons of beer. Ten pounds of barley was more than I could fit in my five gallon pot. So I made two big "I said big right", Big "tea" bags of crushed barley. I boiled them at 153f for one hour and then took the barley out and boiled for ten minutes. After that It was time for the hops. Since I am making American Amber ale I used Cascade hops. I boiled the two ounces of hopes for one hour and with fifteen minutes left I put in one more ounce of the hops and a teaspoon of Irish moss. Irish moss (Shhhh its a brewers secret) helps with the clearity in the cooling process and a clearer final beer.

Bag of barley

Boiling the barley at 153f for one hour.

Cascade Hops

Irish moss

Wyeast Liquid yeast