OK. First let's start with Elf King Ale I. I find it to be too light in body. I know I labeled it Elf King Ale Lite but it is too light. The first time I tried it it tasted to me like watered down beer. But the hops is awesome. Amarillo for the win. I should defiantly roll with it more in the future. It also has some fruity ester type flavor in it but not as much as before. Ellie drank a bunch of this with me during Super Bowl. It was awesome.
Janet's Brown Ale. The first week the best this beer was. That's because the dry hops shown through. After that the dry hops went away and I was left with a slightly bitter beer. The bitterness is an aftertaste that lingers on the tongue far too long. It has a nice mouth feel and malty taste. There are coffee type notes in the beer.
Elf King Ale II. Just sampled some from the fermenter after a week and I think it's going to be great. No fruity esters. No strong hop aroma or taste. Not overly bitter. Should be a very nice and balanced beer. It will have a slightly darker appearance and more robust body. I think this beer with Amarillo would KILL. Looking forward to drinking this. Also this was the first beer that used harvested yeast from Elf King Ale I. It took 24 hours before signs of fermentation but then really took off. I think the yeast was acclimating to the new environment. In the future I should make a starter to get the yeast alive and going from a harvest.
Strawberry mead. This didn't come out how I wanted. I was looking for a semi-sweet mead. I took very good care of this yeast and nourished it for a week (mead has little nutrients for yeast). And by golly it did it's job. I guess I nourished it too well. I wanted it to give up at some point. But it fermented nearly all the sugar in the mead. As a result, the mead now has no residual sweet flavor. It tastes close to wine. Ellie pegged it as a strawberry honey champagne. That's a good description. Very dry. Almost too dry. It is now at 13% ABV. You can taste the alcohol. It has that "hot" alcohol taste to it. I think the annoying parts of this mead will mellow in time (it's only a week old). Primary fermentation is complete. It now need time to age and improve.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Elf King Ale II
My second official Elf King Ale. I've made some changes. Added more grain. And I changed the crystal 15L to crystal 40L. This should give the beer more body and color. I also changed the flavour hops at the end to Centennial since I couldn't get Amarillo. So, far I have tried Amarillo and Cascade. I like Amarillo better.
Recipe:
10lbs 2 row
1 lbs Crystal 40L
0.75oz Magnum 14.4 AA at 60 min
1oz Centennial 10.3AA at 5min
1oz Centennial 8.9AA at 1min
WLP001 - was harvested from the last batch.
Whirlfloc, servomyces
I needed to attempts to get my strike water temp correct. During the first attempt I added too much cold water. On the second attempt I got it to 165 which is where I wanted it.
After I got done adding grain, 5.2, checking PH, etc. the mash temp is 150F. I wanted 153F. When I first doughed in it was 155F so I thought I was the man. It appears I am not the man. So I will need to rely on the crystal 40L grain to give the beer body.
Also, I ran into a problem. I have two glass thermometers which are 10 degrees off. The new one that floats is 10 degrees higher than my old standby. I need yet another glass thermometer to resolve the issue. I can't be 10 degrees off in the mash. Either I right as of now or I'm off as of now. The beer seems fine lately so I'm not going to sweat it.
I wanted to see if the pH really does change with the 5.2 so I bought some pH strips. About 5mins after dough in I measured the mash at 5.5-5.8. It does appear different after the 5.2. I did seems to change the pH and make the mash more acidic. I'm not sure it is at 5.2 right now. But I will check when the mash is over.
Just did my first runnings. Forgot to check the pH before I emptied the first runnings. Next time.
Batch sparging today. Did one already. While waiting for the sparge water to heat up I did a little experiment where I let the remaining water in my hot liquor tank heat to boil. The new thermometer measured 200F. The old standby measured 211ish. It's 212 says the internets. At least now I know.
Pre-boil gravity is 1.030. I let it boil for about 15 minutes before putting in the first hops.
OG is 1.048. That is terrible efficiency. Perhaps I should add 2 gallons of boiling water at mash out. Then just have one batch sparge. I've got to get some consistency on this. It's driving me crazy.
Recipe:
10lbs 2 row
1 lbs Crystal 40L
0.75oz Magnum 14.4 AA at 60 min
1oz Centennial 10.3AA at 5min
1oz Centennial 8.9AA at 1min
WLP001 - was harvested from the last batch.
Whirlfloc, servomyces
I needed to attempts to get my strike water temp correct. During the first attempt I added too much cold water. On the second attempt I got it to 165 which is where I wanted it.
After I got done adding grain, 5.2, checking PH, etc. the mash temp is 150F. I wanted 153F. When I first doughed in it was 155F so I thought I was the man. It appears I am not the man. So I will need to rely on the crystal 40L grain to give the beer body.
Also, I ran into a problem. I have two glass thermometers which are 10 degrees off. The new one that floats is 10 degrees higher than my old standby. I need yet another glass thermometer to resolve the issue. I can't be 10 degrees off in the mash. Either I right as of now or I'm off as of now. The beer seems fine lately so I'm not going to sweat it.
I wanted to see if the pH really does change with the 5.2 so I bought some pH strips. About 5mins after dough in I measured the mash at 5.5-5.8. It does appear different after the 5.2. I did seems to change the pH and make the mash more acidic. I'm not sure it is at 5.2 right now. But I will check when the mash is over.
Just did my first runnings. Forgot to check the pH before I emptied the first runnings. Next time.
Batch sparging today. Did one already. While waiting for the sparge water to heat up I did a little experiment where I let the remaining water in my hot liquor tank heat to boil. The new thermometer measured 200F. The old standby measured 211ish. It's 212 says the internets. At least now I know.
Pre-boil gravity is 1.030. I let it boil for about 15 minutes before putting in the first hops.
OG is 1.048. That is terrible efficiency. Perhaps I should add 2 gallons of boiling water at mash out. Then just have one batch sparge. I've got to get some consistency on this. It's driving me crazy.
Strawberry Mead
Double brew day today. Brewing mead and beer.
When Kevin bought the honey from Fillmore, he bought too much. All I had to do was buy a little more and then we got enough for two batches of mead. Ellie likes strawberries. So I figure what the hell I'll make her some strawberry mead. The first adventure was finding strawberries. She had been eating these ones from the store for the last week and I thought they were bitter. I didn't want to be forced to use those strawberries. But then we found some poor guy sitting on the side of the road and he had a bunch. Ellie gets out and speaks the talk of her people and haggles the guy to $32 for 12lbs of strawberries. I gave him $35. Oops.
Anyhow now we got the berries it's time to cut them up which Ellie did. She cut them into eights and put them into a bucket of StarSan. I re-hydrated some wine yeast. I got 71B-1122 from MoreBeer. Two packets. That's 16 grams. Probably a little too much but that is better than too little since honey lacks nutrients for the yeast. The water I rehydrated in was luke warm water and I added 20grams of Go-Ferm nutrients. This seemed like a lot. I triple checked. Maybe I'm crazy, I don't know.
I got the fermenter ready to go and transferred the berries to the fermenter.
I began to heat the water when Ellie comes along to help pour in the honey. It's heavy and will sit on the bottom and scorch unless someone stirs it up. So we got that honey out of their containers and checked the gravity. Ellie had fun with the new refractometer. If measured at 1.115. Although it looked like distilled water measured in at 1.005. So I would say the gravity was 1.11. Nice!
Afterwards it was heated to 170 for 15min and then I cooled it like I did with Kevin's mead. I then transferred it to the fermenter and shook it up. I then went to add O2 and found that when I had sterilized the oxygen stone earlier in the day I melted a little bit of the rubber tubing which caused the O2 to rush out before it hit the stone. So I taped it up with plumbers tape and it seemed to work. I'll need to replace it next time.
Then I added the yeast nutrients (Ferm-K and DAP). And then I added the yeast. I then shook it all up and it now sits in the bar area.
BTW, those strawberries were wonderful. They looked great. Tasted good too.
When Kevin bought the honey from Fillmore, he bought too much. All I had to do was buy a little more and then we got enough for two batches of mead. Ellie likes strawberries. So I figure what the hell I'll make her some strawberry mead. The first adventure was finding strawberries. She had been eating these ones from the store for the last week and I thought they were bitter. I didn't want to be forced to use those strawberries. But then we found some poor guy sitting on the side of the road and he had a bunch. Ellie gets out and speaks the talk of her people and haggles the guy to $32 for 12lbs of strawberries. I gave him $35. Oops.
Anyhow now we got the berries it's time to cut them up which Ellie did. She cut them into eights and put them into a bucket of StarSan. I re-hydrated some wine yeast. I got 71B-1122 from MoreBeer. Two packets. That's 16 grams. Probably a little too much but that is better than too little since honey lacks nutrients for the yeast. The water I rehydrated in was luke warm water and I added 20grams of Go-Ferm nutrients. This seemed like a lot. I triple checked. Maybe I'm crazy, I don't know.
I got the fermenter ready to go and transferred the berries to the fermenter.
I began to heat the water when Ellie comes along to help pour in the honey. It's heavy and will sit on the bottom and scorch unless someone stirs it up. So we got that honey out of their containers and checked the gravity. Ellie had fun with the new refractometer. If measured at 1.115. Although it looked like distilled water measured in at 1.005. So I would say the gravity was 1.11. Nice!
Afterwards it was heated to 170 for 15min and then I cooled it like I did with Kevin's mead. I then transferred it to the fermenter and shook it up. I then went to add O2 and found that when I had sterilized the oxygen stone earlier in the day I melted a little bit of the rubber tubing which caused the O2 to rush out before it hit the stone. So I taped it up with plumbers tape and it seemed to work. I'll need to replace it next time.
Then I added the yeast nutrients (Ferm-K and DAP). And then I added the yeast. I then shook it all up and it now sits in the bar area.
BTW, those strawberries were wonderful. They looked great. Tasted good too.
Kevin's Mead
Kevin and I made mead last weekend. We made a 5 gallon batch. We used 15lbs of orange honey from Fillmore. We mixed up the water and honey and warmed it to 160F for 15 minutes. We then cooled the batch and poured it into his bucket.
We then oxygenated it for two minutes and added the yeast nutrients. Then we added 5 oranges and what two drunks think 100 raisins look like. The oranges were cut into 8ths. I made sure to sanitize everything.
We added the yeast and I dumped the stir bar into the bucket. I was going to say forget it but Kevin made me feel like we should get it. So I sprayed my arm with StarSan and went in there after it.
Kevin left with the mead and I gave him the nutrients with instructions to add half in two days and the other half two days after that.
A couple of things that I have learned. I am improving the process by the way in which I cool the wort (or in this case must). I will put the kettle in the large basin in the garage and hook up water to the wort chiller. And I will have ice water within the basin. Also, towards the end I ran ice water through the chiller. That worked great. All the water coming from the wort chiller went into the washing machine.
As a side note I found it funny when I told Ellie that Kevin would ferment the mead she had the funniest look on her face. As if Kevin would steal the mead and never give us any. It was hilarious.
EDIT: Kevin's Mead OG was 1.095. We were shooting for 1.0.
We then oxygenated it for two minutes and added the yeast nutrients. Then we added 5 oranges and what two drunks think 100 raisins look like. The oranges were cut into 8ths. I made sure to sanitize everything.
We added the yeast and I dumped the stir bar into the bucket. I was going to say forget it but Kevin made me feel like we should get it. So I sprayed my arm with StarSan and went in there after it.
Kevin left with the mead and I gave him the nutrients with instructions to add half in two days and the other half two days after that.
A couple of things that I have learned. I am improving the process by the way in which I cool the wort (or in this case must). I will put the kettle in the large basin in the garage and hook up water to the wort chiller. And I will have ice water within the basin. Also, towards the end I ran ice water through the chiller. That worked great. All the water coming from the wort chiller went into the washing machine.
As a side note I found it funny when I told Ellie that Kevin would ferment the mead she had the funniest look on her face. As if Kevin would steal the mead and never give us any. It was hilarious.
EDIT: Kevin's Mead OG was 1.095. We were shooting for 1.0.
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