Black IPA with homegrown hops

So the Black IPA that I made using the staggered harvest of Cascade and Nugget hops turned out pretty good.  The beer has a big hop aroma from the dry hopping, and the taste is nice balance of slightly roasted grains and pungent hop flavors - citrus, pine, grassy, earthy.  Nice body too.

Recipe was:

6.6 lb Pale Liquid Malt Extract
2.0 lb Light Dry Malt Extract @30min
.75 lb Carafa III Special Malt (steeped)
.75 lb Crystal 60 Malt (steeped)

1.75 oz Chinook @60min
1.5 oz Centennial @60min
1.0 oz Nugget @30min
2 to 3 oz (equivalent) of homegrown wet Nugget and Cascade @ 5min

Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast
Dry Hop of 3 oz of homegrown dried Nugget and Cascade in secondary for 1 week

O.G. 1.070
F.G. 1.020
abv ~6.5%

Homebrew Yeast "Washing"

With this last batch of homebrew, I decided to experiment with harvesting and washing the yeast for re-use in future batches.  The yeast I had used for the Porter was a standard English Ale yeast that could be used for a fairly wide array of beers in the future.  When a beer is finished primary fermentation, the yeast have eaten all of the sugars in the wort that they can (to make alcohol and CO2), and have dropped out of suspension in the beer.  The amount dropped out is dependant on how flocculent the yeast strain is. More info: http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_clarification.cfm

A few days before I was ready to bottle the Porter, I boiled 3 mason jars (two quart jars and one big 2-quart jar) to sanitize them and capped them full of the boiled sanitized water.  Put them in the fridge until needed.  

After racking the beer out of the fermenting carboy and into the bottling bucket, what is left on the bottom of the carboy is a thick layer of sludge-like sediment called trub, consisting of inactive yeast, proteins, and hop particles leftover from the brewing process.   So I need to seperate out the yeast to save, called "washing", by removing the stuff I don't want.

Poured the santized water from the 2-quart mason jar into the carboy, swirled around, and poured into the jar.  Put back in the fridge.  After a couple of days, it seperated into 3 layers that looked like this:

The top brown layer is beer liquid, the creamy middle is the yeast, and the bottom darker layer is the trub sediment I don't want.   So I drained off the beer liquid, and poured the creamy yeast layer into one of the smaller jar with about half of the sanitized water.  Shook it up, so it starts looking like this:

 Again, after a few days in the fridge, it again seperates into 3 layers:

 Pour the yeast layer into the 3rd jar, which again after a few days in the fridge, I have refined the yeast layer down to the small amount here:

So I will store this in the fridge until I want to use this yeast again, which will just require making a yeast starter to wake the yeast back up before brewing.

Brewing Porter

Coffee Porter 

6.6 lb Light Malt Extract

1 lb Carastan 30L malt

1 lb Coffee malt

1/2 lb Brown Malt

1.0 oz  Fuggle Hops @ 60 min

1.0 oz Fuggle Hops @ 10 min

Wyeast #1099 Whitbread Ale Yeast

This was a kit from the homebrew store that I received as a Christmas Gift.  The specialty malts were already milled and combined in a bag. 

 Split the specialty malt into 5 muslin bags for steeping

 Into the brewpot with 1.5 gallons water

 Steeped at 150 F for 30 minutes

 Santized the carboy and everything else while I was waiting. 

 Since the malt extract is like molasses, I heated it up for easier pouring. 

 Removed the steeped grain, saved it for the chickens. 

 Added the two cans of malt extract

 Put the hops in muslin bags, for adding at start of boil, and 10 minutes remaining. 

 Boiled for 60 minutes

 Into the sink for an ice bath

 I had 3 gallons of pre-boiled water that I put in the freezer to add to the wort to bring down to about 70 F .

 Readied the 6.5 gallon carboy and funnel. 

 After shaking up to aerate, removed a sample for measuring the original gravity. 

 Original Gravity of 1.050. 

 Pitched the yeast

 Airlock on, time to ferment.

 After a few days fermenting at about 65F, got a nice layer of krausen.

Homebrew- English IPA update

Now 3 weeks after bottling.  Last week it was carbonated, but had no head.  So now it must be fully carbonated.  Taste is descent, but I hope it improves with some more bottle conditioning. 

Hops have been ordered

Just a quick note - hops for the garden have been ordered!   It turns out that the local homebrew store sells hop rhizomes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome) and a better price and more variety than our usual seed and plant catalog. 

They should be ariving by April, we ordered two rhizomes each of Nugget and Cascade, in case we have bad luck starting them.  Nugget is a strong bittering hop, while Cascade is a finishing hop used to add aroma and flavoring.  Nugget is described as herbal and spicey, while Cascade imparts citrus and floral aromas that are popular with American Pale Ales and IPAs.

More info on hop varieties: http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter5-3.html

1st batch of Homebrew is carbonated

The first batch of homebrew - an English IPA, is now carbonated after two weeks of bottle conditioning.  It still tastes a bit fresh, going to wait another week to crack open another.

Bottling Homebrew

Bottles are de-labeled and washed, ready for sanitation.

Bottle caps are sanitized


















Lid and airlock removed, final gravity was checked, the fermented beer is ready to be bottled

Priming sugar is dissolved in water to add to bottling bucket, for carbonating the bottles.

Siphoning line and bottle filler is sanitized

Siphoning the beer from the fermenting bucket into the bottling bucket.

Yeast cake left at the bottle of the fermenting bucket. Maybe next time I'll experiment with collecting and washing the yeast for re-use, but not this time.

Time to fill the bottles

And finally capping

Bottles should be carbonated and ready for drinking in a few weeks.