Progress, plans, and news

The Friday Brew Update

After brewing on Friday (March 26th), the A peTit APA is moving along nicely. Since I used previously washed yeast, I expected for fermentation to really begin at around the 48 hour mark like it did with my blonde beer. The APA got started a little earlier, starting activity around 36 hours. Here is what my carboy looked  like this morning:

A decent size krausen and nice activity

I have yet to take a reading but expect to sometime Friday to check the gravity reading. With the S-05 yeast that I used, I expect it to be ready to secondary and dry hop on Friday or Saturday. After dry hopping for 7 days, I plan to bottle at least half, maybe more. If I bottle, I feel like my carbonation is more manageable and meets expectations regularly in comparison to kegging…which I have yet to truly master (more on that later). Overall, I have pretty high expectations for this brew but not as much as I had previously. With what will end up being a rather high ABV of 7.1%, I’m not very confident in the aroma dry-hopping will impart. The last hoppy beer I brewed was an IPA with an ABV of 6.8%. I dry hopped that beer with 4oz of cascade hops for 7 days and ended up being incredibly disappointed in the hop aroma. I guess we’ll see, and I’ll continue to write about what I end up with.

Upcoming Competition and Beer Fest

The St. Louis Microfest is coming up at the end of April. I previously haven’t been to the Micro Fest but have been told that it’s the best beer fest of the year. I have ended up going to the Forest Park Heritage Festival the last two years which I’ve really enjoyed…so if the MicroFest even comes close to the Heritage Festival, it will be something I’ll be excited to attend. In addition to the 60+ beers at MicroFest, they’re sponsoring a homebrew competition that I plan to enter. Right now, I don’t have a variety of beers to enter, so it appears I’ll be entering my first APA which I finished in December. I ended up bottling 5 gallons and kegging 5 gallons and luckily saved 3 bottles in case a competition came up. They require two bottles for competition, leaving me with one to try to make sure the beer has aged well in the last 2+ months. Once I decide for sure on whether to enter, I’ll post my recipe on here for critiquing or just to satisfy the curiosity of anyone interested.

Other Random Info

It looks like tomorrow I’m going to be helping the brew master of a commercial brewery brew two different batches of beer. I’ll be waking up early to make sure I’m able to show up at Crown Valley Brewery at 7AM to help/watch Brewmaster Carl Wiersma turn water and grain into something special. I’ll probably make a post about the experience in the very near future.

Upcoming Plans

So after brewing my SNL Parody A peTit APA, I’m already looking to the future. After doing a bit of research and what not, I have decided to branch off some by trying to brew a stout. To this point, I have yet to brew a stout or porter but am looking forward to the challenge and the result. While I’m still unsure as to my exact recipe, here is an idea of what I’m thinking:

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Nottingham
Yeast Starter: no
Batch Size (Gallons): 10
Original Gravity: 1.052
Final Gravity: 1.011
IBU: 22
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: 42 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 14 @ 65F

Ingredients
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00%

16lbs Pale Malt (3.0 SRM) Grain 75.7 %
1.8 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt – 80L (87.0 SRM) Grain 9.70 %
1.8 lbs Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 9.70 %
14.0 oz Roasted Barley (500.0 SRM) Grain 4.90 %

.8 oz Magnum [13.00 %] (60 min) Hops 18 IBU
0.60 oz Cluster [5.00 %] (30 min) Hops 4 IBU

1.2 oz Chocolate Extract (Bottling 0.0 min)
14 oz Cocoa Powder (Boil 0.0 min)
22.0 oz Milk Sugar (Lactose) (0.0 SRM) (Boil 5.0 min)

2 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) Yeast-Ale

Mash Profile

Single Infusion
60 min Mash In Add 7 gallons of water at 168 F 156.0 F
10 min Mash Out Add 7 gallons of water at 176 F 168.0 F

My obvious plan here is to try and get this upcoming beer to taste as close to actual dark chocolate as possible. I’ve researched stouts, chocolate addition, etc quite a bit and have decided this is probably the way to go. There is still a slight chance I use the trifecta of cocoa nibs, cocoa power, and chocolate extract…I guess we’ll see. I’m leaning toward adding to the SNL series and calling this: Turd Fergeson’s Dark Chocolate Stout.