I’ve been itching to use my LOVE digital temperature control for about a year now. I had an opportunity to brew so I thought I would try my hand at one of my favorite lagers, the Munich Dunkel. Specifically the Hofbrau Dunkel. Here’s the recipe I went with.

11 Lbs. Weyermann Munich Type 2 (dark)

6oz. Weyermann Carafa Special II

.5 Lb Weyermann Melanoidin

1.5oz Tettnang hops (60 min.)

2 vials  WLP833 German Bock (2000ml)

Mashed at 154 for 1 hour, I used the Melanoidin malt instead of pulling a decoction. I added the Carafa II right before vorlauf to decrease the amount of astringency dark malts tend to give when mashed for an hour. I’ve heard of this process being called “staining” your mash. Boiled hard for 60 mins. chilled as good as I could with my counterflow chiller, cold crashed in fermentation chamber overnight, then racked off of the break material and pitched the entire yeast starter. Yeast was active 12-24 hours later.

Smelled it this morning, very sulphury. That’s to be expected and will probably gas off over the next few days. I will let you know how it turns out

After the April Brewster’s Cup, here are the standings overall. It’s still a tight race, one competition can swing the results drastically.

1st Place- Jeffrey Mcelfresh (12 points)

2nd Place- Neil Chabut (10 points)

3rd Place- Jake Browning (9 points)

4th Place- Eric Haas (7 points)

3 way tie for 5th- Kris Cole, Bob Sykes & Randy Simmons (6 points)

Thanks to everyone who entered in the second stage of the Brewster’s Cup, we had 58 beers submitted and all of them were of high quality. The judges had a difficult time deciding the Best of Show. Brewster’s Cup standings will be posted soon. On June 1st registration will be open for the July Brewster’s Cup. Here are the winners for April, Congratulations!

#1 Brown porter by Eric Haas

#2 IPA by Bob Sykes

#3 Brown Ale w/ Coffee by Jeffrey Mcelfresh

#4 IIPA by Dan Lemaster

#5 Strong Scotch Ale by Neil Chabut

#6 Bohemian Pilsner by Kris Cole

#7 Northern English Brown by Brian Hinderer

#8 Oatmeal Stout by Neil Chabut

#9 Weizen by Jake Browning

#10 Bourbon Stout by Caleb Hill

#11 Saison by David Miller

#12 Old Ale by John Sahlbom

Register your beers for the April round of the Brewster’s Cup. There is a $5 entry fee and beers can be dropped off at BrewTensils starting March 15th. The deadline for registration and drop off is March 31st.

Registration is currently closed for the April Brewster’s Cup. Thank you to all who submitted entries

I was looking for another wine to make, I didn’t want to do anything “normal”. No fruit bases sounded good, just feeling generally uninspired. So I decided to refer to an expert in wine making, Jack Keller (http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/). After browsing his literally hundreds of recipes I found one for a Wheat wine, being more of a beer lover it was a perfect fit. I plan on making three different variations but here’s the first recipe with my modifications in parentheses.

Read more >>

So finally after hemming and hawing for a month I finally got a chance to brew a beer that’s been on the backburner. The whole goal was to do a SMASH (Single Malt and Single Hop) beer and max out my 10 gallon mash tun.

I’ve been hooked on Old Ales lately, something about the North Coast Old Stock 2011 just sang to me, and I have to brew something inspired by it. However Old Ales tend to be in the 9% alcohol range, while with a maxed out mash tun on a 5 gallon batch could lead to a 15% potential alcohol beer. O-well, I’m still calling it an Old Ale.

First things first, I needed to pick the grain. I decided to look around the shop to see what I could use. I knew that I wanted this to be English inspired, so I immediately nixed all Briess malts. I wanted something malted in England! That’s when I saw it, like a perfect snow flake. 55 lbs. of Crisp Floor Malted Maris Otter would be perfect for this beer. Floor Malting is an old process of germination; it’s slow and labor intensive and has been largely replaced by most modern maltsters.

After choosing the malt, the hops were easy. Recently Hop Union had sent the store a copy of their hop data book and after reading through the copy I knew I wanted to use UK East Kent Golding. I also decided to go with a first wort hopping addition only on this beer, to about 30 IBUs.

The brew day went off without a hitch (aside from a frozen hose, but what can you do). I ended up doing 1 qt./lb. of grain at 156F for about 75 minutes hopping for a good body for this high alcohol beer. I mashed in with 173F strike water which dropped my mash to the target temperature of 156F. The mash, sparge, and boil went off without a hitch. The beer is in the fermenter bubbling happily away.

I want to thank everyone who entered this first leg of the 2012 Brewster’s Cup. Everyone who entered may pick-up their judges sheets at BrewTensils or the DRAFT meeting on Fri. We received an overwhelming 102 entries, which almost tripled last years January competition. We even had to spread the judging out over 2 days!

Best in Show Winners

1. Jeffrey Mcelfresh- Berliner Weisse

2. Randy Simmons & Jake Browning- Classic Rauchbier

3. Neil Chabut – Belgian Golden Strong

4. Marcus Fredrick- Schwarzbier

5. Ben Mockabee- American Amber

This is a YEAR ROUND competition, it’s only the beginning. Get your beers ready for the next leg!

March 1st-Registration Opens

March 17th- Drop-off Begins

March 31st- Registration & drop-off closes

Cheers! Darren

As promised! The the Introduction to All-Grain class notes are now available for download!

Cheers!

As promised the Brewing 102 class notes are now available for download. I hope everyone had fun at the class.

Cheers!

Just wanted to send out a quick heads up to everyone. The Brewing 101 class looks like it is going to be a smash hit, we should have a bunch of new brewers ready to get started on the right foot.

That being said, this class is a free class and as such we are unable to reserve seats. All seating will be on a first come first serve basis. We should have between 40-50 chairs available, if all the chairs are full standing room will be available.

Just a reminder, the class is between 7pm – 9pm on Thursday, Jan 12th. Arrive early to make sure you grab a chair!

Brewing 101 Class Notes

Printing out the class notes and bringing them with you will help you follow along with the class.