Behind the Bar - The Homebrewers' Haven

[Barmacral]

Making a pumpkin red tomorrow. Should be awesome.

[MissoulaSquatch]

Making a pumpkin red tomorrow. Should be awesome.

Very nice, kit or your own recipe?

[Barmacral]

A recipe I grabbed from homebrewtalk for a red ale, and the pumpkin is my own addition. A little concerned about it though, we tasted the post-boil wort today it it was very sweet... but the sample we tasted was drawn from the boil container, and we tasted it after we pitched the honey and yeast into the fermenter, so I'm kind of expecting this to be a ridiculously sweet beer, which is not at all what I had in mind.

 

We bottled the strong bitter we did (also a recipe I grabbed online - we're about 3 recipes away from the first one I've actually designed myself) today and it is pretty tasty. Has a fruity smell to it, and a bitter taste with some caramel and chocolate in it too, as it is actually pretty brown and not pale at all. Now I just need to give it a week to carbonate and it should be good to go.

[MissoulaSquatch]

What was your preparation method for the pumpkin? And what honey did you use?

Also did you use a yeast starter?

[Barmacral]

Baked it for an hour and a half the night before to scoop it all out of the skin, roasted it today until the colour just started to darken before putting it in the mash. No idea about the honey, it is some locally produced stuff that my mother-in-law gets from her co-worker.

 

No on the yeast starter, we get the larger yeast packs that don't really need a starter because there's already enough yeast.

[Rosiesan]

Opened my pumpkin ale (from a kit) a couple of nights ago. It's pretty good! I think it would have been better if it had more pumpkin (or at least fresh) and red ale instead of the pale ale.

[MissoulaSquatch]

Baked it for an hour and a half the night before to scoop it all out of the skin, roasted it today until the colour just started to darken before putting it in the mash. No idea about the honey, it is some locally produced stuff that my mother-in-law gets from her co-worker.

 

No on the yeast starter, we get the larger yeast packs that don't really need a starter because there's already enough yeast.

Well for one, I'm glad you went with real pumpkin (honestly, I could never bring myself to use the canned stuff).  A quick tip for next time tho, while I haven't made my own pumpkin ale yet (decided investing in fitness rather than new equipment/ingredients was a better move at this time) I have done a ton of research on the subject and one thing I kept seeing popping up was adding squash other than pumpkin to the mash as well.  From everything I read, it helps kick up the flavor of the pumpkin and it definitely seems to be the emerging trend with pumpkin ales this year.

Let me know how the honey turns out, I was wanting to use it to bottle my Candied Ginger Witbier but found out later that very little flavor would be added doing this.  Next time around I'll use honey malt in my boil and see how that goes.

The yeast starter was something I was curious about because of your comments on how sweet the wort was, sounded like a high gravity brew..and you want those yeasties healthy for all those sugars.

All in all, sounds like an awesome recipe.  I can't wait to do mine next year (I honestly do need new equipment for my recipe)..I'll drop a few hints, "Pumpkin Milk Porter" featuring english malts, yeast and hops...and some very nice spices from my personal collection.

____________________________________

Related subject, I have a new favorite pumpkin ale this year that I can't get enough of: Lakefront Brewery's Imperial Pumpkin Ale aged in Brandy barrels...I would sell everything I own for every last drop of this stuff in their brewery..

[Barmacral]

Rosiesan: Interesting idea, never thought of using a pale ale for a pumpkin ale before. Might have to look into that sometime.

 

Ajaxus: We actually don't have canned pumpkin here (I'm in Sweden now) which is a little frustrating because it meant by the time I could make the pumpkin beer the pumpkin season is in full swing. A squash addition is a very neat idea. Next year I might just do a squash beer straight up since butternut squashes are plentiful here. I'll definitely let you know what is up with the honey. Be a few weeks yet though.

 

I might try a yeast starter sometime soon, but I need to do some more research to see how beneficial it is.

 

And we'll have to keep this thread alive for a year so you can share how that porter turns out. Sounds delicious.

[MissoulaSquatch]

Rosiesan: Interesting idea, never thought of using a pale ale for a pumpkin ale before. Might have to look into that sometime.

 

Ajaxus: We actually don't have canned pumpkin here (I'm in Sweden now) which is a little frustrating because it meant by the time I could make the pumpkin beer the pumpkin season is in full swing. A squash addition is a very neat idea. Next year I might just do a squash beer straight up since butternut squashes are plentiful here. I'll definitely let you know what is up with the honey. Be a few weeks yet though.

 

I might try a yeast starter sometime soon, but I need to do some more research to see how beneficial it is.

 

And we'll have to keep this thread alive for a year so you can share how that porter turns out. Sounds delicious.

Yams are also a new thing being added to pumpkin ales now (never noticed it until this year).

And yeast starters are awesome for big beers (1.050 OG and above) and even smaller ones..makes for an awesome and rigorous fermentation..altho eventually I want to do it in a temp controlled environment because it generates a TON of heat.

As for the thread, I'll keep it alive for sure..

In related news, I found out yesterday that I am getting a private tour next week of Ale Asylum/Arcade Breweries (they share the same equipment/space) and will also be attending an invite only release party.  I am honestly going to miss things like this when I eventually leave the Chi-town area..

[Barmacral]

Private tour and release party sounds amazing.

 

So we made an IPA today and we'll be doing a Christmas beer next week in hopes to have it ready for December. We also discovered that we were a little low on our pasteurization process for the honey last week. We heated it to around 70C for a minute or so, but discovered that we should have had it up to 80C for 60-90 minutes. Oops? We also realised that we need to ferment the pumpkin red for 3-8 weeks because of the honey, instead of the usual two that we do, so we're gonna give it three weeks this go around and see what happens. So far it has been far more active than the other beers for a longer period of time.

[MissoulaSquatch]

Private tour and release party sounds amazing.

 

So we made an IPA today and we'll be doing a Christmas beer next week in hopes to have it ready for December. We also discovered that we were a little low on our pasteurization process for the honey last week. We heated it to around 70C for a minute or so, but discovered that we should have had it up to 80C for 60-90 minutes. Oops? We also realised that we need to ferment the pumpkin red for 3-8 weeks because of the honey, instead of the usual two that we do, so we're gonna give it three weeks this go around and see what happens. So far it has been far more active than the other beers for a longer period of time.

That was one of my fears..but if your OG was high enough and the yeast is very active, the alcohol "should" kill off any infection.  Raw honey is tough to work with because of this.

As for the time to ferment, my beers never ferment for less than 4 weeks.  It's hard to hit your FG in 2 weeks..homebrew sites tell you you can do it only because they want to convince people how easy it is to make beer (and if it takes less time to make it..you're more inclined to buy more kits/ingredients aka spend $$$).

My typical beer takes 4 weeks to ferment, 2 more weeks if I put it in the secondary and rotate different additions in.  And while the brew sites tell you to bottle condition for 1 week, I never open a bottle until after 3 have passed.  The patience does pay off..you'll get a far better product.

Do you have a hydrometer? Did you take an OG measurement before fermenting?  I'd definitely get used to taking measurements before fermenting and during (use a Wine Thief for easiest measurements) to make sure you hit your FG before bottling.

[Barmacral]

Yeah we use a hydrometer, we measure pre-boil, post-boil and get FG when we bottle. We haven't racked to secondary before so we that measurement is one we haven't done. I also record everything in beersmith, we were high on our gravity in our strong bitter, so that is probably why. Four weeks in primary? I read that you should never let beer sit longer than 3 weeks in primary or the sediment will start having negative effects on the beer.

[MissoulaSquatch]

Honestly the trub shouldn't affect the beer at all in that time frame..you'd only see negative effects if we were talking months of sitting there.  If you want with this beer, since you'll probably get a fair bit of trub, you could rack it out into a secondary fermenter after a few weeks and let it finish up there.  I would say do taste tests everytime you do a gravity reading, and when the flavor is atleast where you want it, get it into a different container.  This beer you brewed in particular will have its flavor changed a lot the more it sits only because of your extra additions (spices, pumpkin, etc).

[Barmacral]

Brewed again today, took a gravity / taste test of the pumpkin red and it is pretty fantastic. None of the earlier sweetness and the honey hasn't done anything bad to the beer. We're going to bottle it in another two weeks, definitely looking forward to it then.

 

The IPA was racked to a secondary and dryhopped today, and also tastes really good. At only 7 days it still has a ways to go, and is very active still (so is the pumpkin ale for that matter), but should be a knockout once we get it done.

 

Today we brewed our Christmas ale which is based off of a clone recipe of Granville Island Winter Ale, a sweet dark ale that has a lot of chocolate and caramel and vanilla flavour in it. I say based off of because it was a partial mash recipe that I converted to all grain. The OG was much higher than predicted, but that would be because beersmith didn't account for the sugars in the white chocolate that we added to the boil. We're going to let this one ferment for a month, putting the vanilla bean in after 7 days and using home-made caramel as our carbonating sugar when we bottle. I think. We might need to add it along side the carbonating sugar, I have to look that up.

 

We're also getting our system down, we brewed in 5.5 hours today, which is hugely up from our first batch which took 6 hours to brew an extract because we had to figure out our setup and what the heck we were even doing.

[MissoulaSquatch]

 

We're also getting our system down, we brewed in 5.5 hours today, which is hugely up from our first batch which took 6 hours to brew an extract because we had to figure out our setup and what the heck we were even doing.

That's always the fun part.  Honestly, last batch I did was a "group" effort..and by that I mean we used my equipment, my recipe and my method..but then I had to deal with other people jumping in and screwing with things.  I honestly have a system that works and works well.  Getting a system down like that is awesome though.

I'm hoping to be brewing again in January..as I've said before, trying to overhaul my equipment..and I have a brewpot on my Christmas list that I have a fair chance of getting.  It's a 15 gal pot, I'm looking to doing full size boils and splitting my batches so I can experiment with various secondary additions and compare the results.

[Barmacral]

Sounds like a frustrating group effort. I am finding that for the amount of work more than two people would be too many. Two of us can keep busy with some downtime and there is never more work than that. Can't imagine doing it as a group.

I actually have a 5 litre sized kit on my wish list so that I can experiment at a super small scale, then bring all the best stuff up to our 20 litre system. Also there is a homebrew beer geek kit made for this 5 litre size that I really want to make.

A bunch of my friends back in Canada want to make beer now, and while I doubt it will happen any time soon my buddy was telling me that they will make a super small extract kit first and just use any old bucket to ferment it to try things out, and if it goes well then for batch two they will use four 5 gallon pots on two stoves and then put all of them into a single 20 gallon carboy he can borrow from his dad. I advised against it but refrained at the time from pointing out that his plan has no basis in reality. Maybe once they get serious about it.

[Barmacral]

So on Sunday I'll be bottling the IPA and the pumpkin ale (just in time for pumpkin season to end - I think I'll be putting about half aside for next year) and brewing a chocolate milk stout. This recipe is the first I've created entirely on my own so I'm excited to try it. I'm expecting it to be ready in time for early next year.

 

Side note, I'm putting together a blog where I will be reviewing beers that I drink and talking about my various beer related adventures such as homebrewing or visiting various breweries, events, etc. It isn't quite ready yet but I'll link it here when it is.

[Endor]

I'm giddy with excitement! Tomorrow with @barefootdawsy we bottle the first ever beer (a Pale Ale) we've brewed, yoweee! Not gonna sleep tonight, can't wait to taste it

[Barmacral]

That sounds super exciting, good luck!

[Barmacral]

So I started a blog about my beer brewing and drinking adventures. It can be seen here at http://www.dukeofbrew.com

[Barmacral]

Bottled the pumpkin and the IPA yesterday. Both of them tasted delicious from the small sample I tried, now the bottles are sitting in the closet for two weeks to carbonate. We have concluded that our capper isn't very good though and so we'll be getting a new one before we bottle the next batch.

 

Also made a chocolate milk stout that should be ready for January. Looking forward to trying that. My first recipe that I came up with on my own.

 

Next up for us is a rehash of the strong bitter we made as our first all grain. I'll be lowering the abv a bit and we're going to let it ferment longer. See how it turns out this time. Also we'll be doing a yeast starter. The John Palmer stuff lead us to believe we were good to go but the beersmith book says otherwise, so we'll do one and see how it goes. The current batch is definitely improving with age. After that we'll be doing first an imperial black IPA followed by an imperial stout with some smoked malts and whiskey soaked wood chips in the secondary.

[MissoulaSquatch]

Bottled the pumpkin and the IPA yesterday. Both of them tasted delicious from the small sample I tried, now the bottles are sitting in the closet for two weeks to carbonate. We have concluded that our capper isn't very good though and so we'll be getting a new one before we bottle the next batch.

 

Also made a chocolate milk stout that should be ready for January. Looking forward to trying that. My first recipe that I came up with on my own.

 

Next up for us is a rehash of the strong bitter we made as our first all grain. I'll be lowering the abv a bit and we're going to let it ferment longer. See how it turns out this time. Also we'll be doing a yeast starter. The John Palmer stuff lead us to believe we were good to go but the beersmith book says otherwise, so we'll do one and see how it goes. The current batch is definitely improving with age. After that we'll be doing first an imperial black IPA followed by an imperial stout with some smoked malts and whiskey soaked wood chips in the secondary.

Let me know how the starter goes, I've had very good luck with mine so far.  For me the tough part is simply timing, starting it at the proper time the day before so that it is peaking right before you pitch.  I tend to get two days off from work to line up if I'm going to do a brew day just so I can be sure everything comes together properly.  Altho as discussed before, it all comes down to finding what method works for you..and for me, being super anal about things is part of my method..lol

[BarefootDawsy]

Can't believe I forgot to post the latest news...the Southern Rebels pale ale that @Endor and I made has been brewed and bottled! It's very drinkable too

[MissoulaSquatch]

I dig the label!

[Barmacral]

Agreed, love the label.

 

How much does a starter affect the flavour vs not having one? We just bottled two beers and both came out super well, and neither had a starter.