Friday, September 2, 2011

Catching up is hard to do

posted by Jon

Well, it's been almost 2 months since the last post. Summer is over, kids (and teachers) are back to school, the weather is getting cooler insanely hot (???) and I should probably give an update.

Since my last post, three batches of beer have been brewed: Caspian, Batch 22 and The Queen's Rye. If you want the play by play it is in the previous post.

"Caspian" was brewed on 7/18. It is a robust porter styled after GLBC's Edmund Fitzgerald. Should end up around 5.5-6% ABV. I will be bottling it today. [edit: bottled 9/3, F.G. = 1.010, 5.9% ABV]

"Batch 22" was a lot of fun to brew. You may remember that originally is was going to be called "Batch 20" as it was the 20th batch of beer that I had done as a Professional Brewmaster (tic). It was going to have 20 different ingredients. However, since we brewed the Caspian first and I did a side batch of IPA, this beer ended up being my 22nd batch of beer. This meant we now needed 22 ingredients. On brew day, 7/30, Ryan W and I went to the store to pick up our final few ingredients. We decided on fresh ginger root (requested by Ryan B), a 7 oz bag of coconut (which we toasted), 2 chipotle peppers in adobo (yes, you read that correctly) and a stick of brewer's licorice. We added these to our normal ingredients and also added .25 lb of maple syrup than Ryan brought, .6 lb of molasses from the Ippel house and 2 1/2 vanilla beans. I tasted the beer when racking it to the secondary and it has the potential to be the best beer I've done. It should clock in around 10% ABV.

Finally, "The Queen's Rye" was an IPA that turned into a RyePA. This was the final batch of beer to be done in KSB's first fiscal year, so the funds were all tapped out. Ryan W had enough interest in making it a RyePA that he was willing to use his own money to buy a lb of rye malt and a lb of flaked rye. We brewed it on 8/26 with a crazy amount of hops and I will be racking it to the secondary on top of a couple oz leaf hops. We're looking for 6% ABV by the time it's done, so this will be a nice IPA.

We are still looking for suggestions for our next few beers. We will be rebrewing the Gourdon, but still need 11 more recipes. Feel free to comment.

3 comments:

  1. Let's Brew a Breakfast Stout and an Imperial Stout and a Honey Wheat and a Belgian Triple and a Barley Wine.

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  2. Barleywine is now on the schedule for September (drinkable some time this winter). Gourdon will be brewed as soon as pumpkins are ripe (Sept/Oct?). Imperial Stout of some type in November.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Also, double batch of hard cider as soon as cider is ready.

    ReplyDelete