Hoppy Ale Competition

Okay, back to the grind! What is everyone thinking for the next competition? Bill and I briefly spoke about it yesterday at the after party, but what sayeth the other brewmen?

After some consideration, I believe I have no other choice than to brew a scaled down wheat wine. In doing so, I'm going to scale down the recipe I used for my wheat wine to hit a 1.068-1.070 OG, then dry hop the shit out of it. I'm going to use the exact same grain bill, change the hops to Amarillo (tangerine!), then pitch the 1272. I really really like White Labs London Ale (I used this for the FES), but I am quite pleased with how my wheat wine turned out, and I want to keep it as similar as possible. Since it will have a significantly lower gravity, I'll call it an Imperial Wheat IPA. ... or the "I.P.Hay" for short!

Now, what are you all thinking for yours?

I am rocking an American Pale Ale......I know it is boring, but out of all the hoppy beers I've made (not many), this one sticks out in my head as my favorite. It borders on the side of an IPA, but the bitterness/alcohol aren't quite as high. I am going to duplicate the recipe and employ the hopback.
I also made a pretty decent clone of Troeg's Hopback Amber, but I like the Pale Ale....wait, I just had an idea, I will make both and submit which ever one tastes less like cabbage/yogurt?.

Just so you all know, my hopback is free to use for any member-in-good-standing of the BMG. Only thing is that you also need a counterflow or plate chiller for the hopback to work. I will also make my therminator available for use.

Later dudes,

Jester

PS - my body doesn't want any beer for at least 16 days!!

Im going to try out an Idea I've had for a long time and I Call it "The Honey Hop"

Basically a Honey base IPA


LOL quote of the Day for Beerquest 2009 Irish Ale - "yogurt?"

How about doing a belgium like Orval? I have a recipe book that puts at a whopping 40 ibus! yet all the reviews say there is no hop flavor that becomes pronounced.... Or do you think I would get docked?

I'm going IPA Malone for this one. I will do two batches with two different yeasts and see which I like better.

I think I have finally decided on making a hoppy wheat beer. After talking with Carnes a little, I was initially planning to do a hopped Kolsch, but things have changed. I'm going to base this beer loosely around the new Boulevard IPA. Im going to increase the wheat malt from 5-10% to about 25%. Because of that, Im going to call the beer a "hoppy wheat" instead of an IPA. Im also going to use the American Wheat yeast. It should be interesting!

Remember to put your afiliation to the brewman group on your entry forms. Represent!

So anyone want an orval to help me culture the sludge? This would be my first time culturing and would love to learn more about how to actually do it. I have read a lot but you don't really get a feel for it until you actually do it. This would be for the secondary fermentation (so don't need it right away)

Also as far as malt/hop bill
The recipe calls for german pale malts. I noticed euro-pils on the sheet, but I think I am going to use two row, and caramunich (recipe calls for caravienna but jamil uses the caramunich.)

As far as hops go:
They use hallertau, Styrian goldings, and they dry hop with goldings. I was thinking about using Santium for the bittering, Liberty for the aroma, and tettnanger for dry hops. the flavor profile will alter slightly but I think it will turn out tasty.

Thoughts and ideas are greatly appreciated.
Dobee

Yo Dobe,

I could help you out with the culturing. Depending on how in-depth you'd like to go, there is a couple of different options. I can get the sludge, spread it on a Petri dish, and collect individual colonies. From there, we can step them up individually in starters.

Perhaps the easier thing to do, given your goals, is to get two bottles of Orval, decant them into beer glasses, give them to me for taste analysis, then dump the sludge from both bottles into a starter (under very sanitary conditions...ethanol swabbing, flaming of bottle lips etc.). I have a stirplate that can help culture the bugs. 1.5-2 days later, let the starters sit undistrubed so the bugs can settle. Decant the liquid phase, then dump the left over sludge into a secondary and rack the beer atop.

Let me know what you think. If you go the second route, you probably wouldn't even need my help.

Jester

I am thinking the second one sounds better it will probably be a couple of weeks before I get to the stage of a secondary and dry hopping the beer. I will keep you updated when we need to do it. Should be an interesting experiment.

If you didn't recieve the E-mail the registration is up on empyrean's website. Better get it in.

OK guys.. If you didnt get mt text the other day Ill say it again.. Never will I brew to beers at the same time. It was a very long day (9a-7p). However this morning I checked on both the beers (BQ Honey Hop, and BMG Sweet Orange Junpier Ale Dubbed SOJA) are smelling damn amazing. The Honey Hop with a 5 Min Hop addition of 2oz Cascade and 1oz nugget it smells great and soon even better when I dry hop with 6oz Cascade.. The SOJA with a 15 Min addition of 6oz Sweet Orange Peels, 2oz Juniper Berries also smelling great.. At first I was worried about everything due to my first time culturing Yeast and my dad cleaning out the garage kicking up dust and other crap into the air.. So was a little worried about the yeast and possible infection (still little worried).

Anyway below are links to My recipes for Both beer and also a Picture of my Orange peels and Junpier Berry addition

BQ Honey Hop
http://hopville.com/recipe/42256/american-ipa-recipes/honey-hop

SOJA
http://hopville.com/recipe/37692/spice-herb-or-vegetable-beer-recipes/sweet-orange-juniper-ale

Hey Schweit, you really had a long day huh? Well, Im excited to try the finished products. That SOJA beer is going to be nice and sour/tart, one of my favorite qualities in a beer. You should probably consider raising a colony of bees though, hives would be cheaper for you.


I also brewed on Saturday. I brewed my wheat IPA. I had some problems that need discussed the next time we all get together. Long story short, my mash temperatures may have been off and I missed my final gravity by over 5 points (low). Hopefully it will still turn out. I probably should have boiled down some more. Anyway, right after flame out I started throwing all sorts of small hop additions in there. It's a hodgepodge and completely irreplicable (no measuring involved). The initial taste was hopnificent and the fermentation is vigerous. I'm now a smack pack man, no more white labs for this guy.

So yesterday was a two beer day for me too. Actually only took me around 6 hours for two beers. Not too shabby. I brewed my Orval clone, and a honey nut brown that I am going to add blueberry.

The problem I have now is that I used a smack pack of belgium abby yeast and tried culturing it to do two beers. I let the smack pack sit over night and it did not swell. I figured oh well I am going to be culturing the stuff anyways. I threw it in a growler with some wort I made up of DME. I threw half in my orval and half in the honey nut brown. They did not take After around 16 hours still no bubbles coming out.

So I repitched the honey nut brown with safale us-09 I had (love that yeast). And now I have to head over to kirks sometime today to get another strain of belgium.

I'm hoping for the best that they are not contaminated!

Other then that if they turn out both were really really tasty beers. The honey nut brown tasted like honey and nuts with an awesome aroma of honey, nuts, and malt (blueberry muffin beer here I come long shot). The Orval clone was on the sweeter side with a great german spice hop aroma and the flavor was sweet but hoppy.

Brew happy or get drunk doing it.
Dobee

Update: Went home during lunch (around 26 hours after initial pitch) still had nothing from my Orval clone as far as fermentation. Got some pitchable tubes of belgium yeast that I threw in. Crossing my fingers that it takes.

Dobee, I hope your beer turns out. That is strange that you and Schweit both had problems with the smack pack. I had great luck. According to others, the smack pack is hit and miss. You should definitely check the dates on them before purchase though. I have to ask the obvious, forgive me, but did you smack the pack correctly to give your yeast the nutrients. Personally, I smack the hell out of it, and the pack started swelling after about 15 minutes.

That sucks about the smack pack! I was as curious as Belding too. I beat the crap out of mine, use a hammer, then jump on it for about 2.5 hours. (okay... maybe not all that..)... but I do make sure that inner bag is broken. Good luck, nonetheless!!

p.s. I would LOVE Lazlos to do a true Belgian as a BQ beer. A hoppy belgian just might do the trick!

On mine the date was fine.. cuz I looked at it, after it had not swelled 6 hours after beating it to the hell out of it.. But this is the first of prolly 10 smack packs I've used to not swell up.. after dumping it into my growler to culture I looks at the packed inside and it was broke and emptied. So I dont know what happened but mine cultured just fine. I bet what happened with Dobee, was he just wasnt strong enough to break the bag inside

In addition to Jamil's pitching rate calculator pitching rate calculator, that I think Porter already posted about, the Wyeast site has a good discussion on pitching rate and their own pitching rate calculator: http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_pitchrates.cfm.

The nutrient pouch has some good nutrients for the yeast, but isn't like doing a starter since there isn't enough food in there to get any more yeast growth (well, I think that pouch is less than 50 mL, 50 mL of starter wort would bring 100 billion cells to about 102 billion cells). A vial or a smack pack contains about half the optimum amount of yeast to pitch into most of the beer styles we make. We've all made really good beer using just a vial or smack pack, but you don't really have control over how fresh it is or how it was handled before you got it, so a starter is a good way to ensure this, plus you can pitch the optimum amount of yeast for what you're trying to make.

Just so you guys know I beat my smack packs like a red headed step child, and shake it like the baby sitter does to a new born. I will try next time to be a little more cautious on my starter. Both beers seem to be about done fermenting. The bubbles have almost stopped (1 every 5-10 minutes) as of this morning. I know the Honey nut brown smells AMAZING. The Orval clone smells like plastic (I purchased a new airlock so I think that is why am smelling the plastic) and belgium ipa goodness. Probably this weekend I will racking them into secondaries and dry hopping both. So hopefully they will turn out to be Damn good beers.

...i love a good plastic pale ale.

Well, I finished with the two batch day and I don't know how much I will be doing that in the future. I started at 5 pm and finished clean up at 2 am. I think both batches went pretty well, though. For the BQ beer, I went with 20% rye malt and 1 lb of rice hulls and surprisingly it lautered just like normal. Also, I used massive amounts of hops during the last 10 minutes. I used only 5 grams of summit at 60 minutes and the remainder of the IBUS come from 2 oz magnum, 3 oz of cascade and 1 oz of tettnang during the last 10 minutes. I am hoping to get a more complex hop aroma from this--we will see. I reached exactly my goal of 1.065 og in accordance with the new bq rule of nothing over 16 plato. I hope the london 3 can chew that baby at least down to 1.015. The other brew is my all challenger pale ale with a few changes from last time.
-Porter

So after a week of not being able to smell!!!!!!!! WHICH IS THE MOST ANNOYING THING WHEN YOU ARE FERMENTING BEER!!!!@!@!! I sat around my plastic buckets and felt like I was back in junior high huffing glue. Ah the amazing smell of fermented beer! They both smell good. Even though I re-pitched on the honey brown some of the belgium notes did come out (So the yeastie beasties were still kicking it). Both smell amazing. Next step will be to try and dry hop both, that will probably be sometime this week.

Dobee

Well, as many of you know my beer is a mess. I missed my OG by 8 points (too low), and tried to compensate by adding some DME to the primary. Well, I racked the beer to the secondary last night and added my dry hops. I checked the gravity and found that my beer finished at 1.008. I was shooting for 1.013. Needless to say, the beer is real bitter and dry. Any suggestions.

I am considering some ideas to add either lactose or maltodextrin after I keg it. Lactose will sweeten the beer, but it is creamy and really only belongs in stouts, porters or browns. Maltodextrin will give the beer body and a thicker head, but will not impart any sweetness to balance the beer. Also, it could start another fermentation. Have any of you experimented with this?

So today I racked my Honey hop into the Secondary and added 8oz Cascade (Pellets) and 2oz Kent goldings (Whole)... Added the Kents just cuz I had them laying around... But I did get a chance to try it while racking and my first impression was alot of Alcohol on the nose, no hop amora, but (mind you i have a shitty pallet) I thot it was pretty good.. its mildly bitter, very mellow beer, and I couldnt really get any of alcohol taste as you would expect from the nose. With all that said I still thot it was a good session beer.

OK now for the SOJO.. SAME AS HONEY HOP... Alcohol on the nose but the beer I thot was great.. Its Sweet, alot of bitter tart Orange Flavor, but still not alot of Juniper Berry taste.. But still a damn good beer..

So I dont know whats up with the alcohol smell but im hoping the addition of Hop will mask the alcohol smell of the Honey Hop, and hoping CO2 will help as well

Well Schweit,

Sounds like you have a case of the "Beldings". I am known for my estery off flavors that are very noticeable following the primary and even the secondary. I still haven't completely narrowed down the problem, but I think it has to do with my fermentation temps. I have a hard time keeping my basement below 68 degrees, and you need to figure that the temperature in the fermenter is an additional 4-6 degrees. I think this might be a bit high for most of the yeasts I use.

Esters are usually a result of higher fermentation temperatures, but can also be a problem of underpitching and/or poor aeration of your wort before you pitch the yeast. Whatever! I try to correct for this, but it is innevitable. The good news is that most esters subside a little with carbonation and time.

I've also been slipping lately when it comes to my brewing. I'm looking at the wrong gravity marks, and I recently figured out why my fermentation aroma is always real bland, bready and smells of alcohol. Wait for it......... Well, I use Vodka in my airlock. Why don't I just use starsand? More importantly, why did I just now come to that conclusion?

So kegged both my beers this week. The Blueberry honey nut brown fermented down too low and so there was not much malt flavor left to the beer. To counteract this I added a little extra blueberry and about 1-2 ounce Kent Goldings to the keg. It sweetened it up a little bit much, but I'm hoping as the carbonation starts to perk up it will mellow (also like a dumb ass I added the blueberry in the bottom so I think there might be some blueberry flavor in the draw tube. As far as my Orval (non infected) clone, tasted AMAZING. It had a nice peppery hop aroma with a slight banana clove to it. Then the flavor was smooth with a slight peppery twinge followed by the slightest flavor of banana. I added ~2 ounces of tettenager to dry hop with and hopefully it will still be amazing in a week.