What's in your fermenter??

[john mills]

I don't know of a local source. Great Fermentations was offering flavor shots with their Berlinerweis a couple of years ago at Summerfest. Give Anita a call and see what she knows. I don't see it listed on their website.

Concerning the sparge, do you think the late addition of rice hulls would've helped? I can't wait to try what you made.

[JohnD]

Brewed a sweet stout today.

[Chris Norrick]

Pawpaw Weizenbock is back on! I just had a bag of frozen pawpaw pulp handed to me! Used a fresh one in some pancakes...YUM!

[Chris Norrick]

I was also thinking of finding some of the raspberry syrup for use at SWIRCA but I might just fake it with some thinned out jelly. I sort of did a modified batch sparge with mine. I added a bunch of boiling water that got it up to around 150 and then poured most of that off. I then added another small amount of hot water and fly sparged using the back of my spoon to disperse the water till I had enough volume. There is so little grain used the keg mash tun isn't really cut out for this beer.

Mine still hasn't cleared a bit in the fermenter. It's the murkiest carboy I've had and I used whirflock in the boil. The air lock hasn't moved in a few days and I'll probably keg Tues or Wed to get it ready for SWIRCA. I'm debating on using the gelatin or not to help clear it. The picture here http://seancoates.com/blogs/berliner-weisse is close to mine so maybe that' just the way it's supposed to look.

The berliner weisse is definitely slimy and hard to sparge. Before fermenting it tasted like funky lemonade!! Really tart but with some sweet from the malt. After fermentation, the sweet will be gone. It's a style I like but if you don't like sour beers it could be a shock to the system. Does anyone know of a source for raspberry or woodruff syrup? I've never had a berliner weisse with this as an additive, but it is traditional in Germany to take the edge off the sourness.

[JohnD]

I'm considering using grenadine syrup. Basically it's just something to take the edge off the tart. I got some fresh raspberries at the store yesterday and will make syrup out of them. Still a lot of goo on top of the Berliner weisse. I think I will add water to the keg to decrease the strength. OG was 1.044 and should have been about 1.030 to 1.035. Volume was a bit short.

[Chris Norrick]

Well, I've got a lot of Butyric acid in the Berliner Weiss. If you recall our off flavor a couple of months ago, Butyric smells like puke. I don't think this will be serve-able at SWIRCA. I've read that some brett can convert the Butyric to something floral. I'll probably dump it.

[JohnD]

My Berliner weisse turned out really good. It is in a keg and is carbonated now. Also made raspberry syrup. I'll bring the keg to the August meeting

[JohnD]

A couple of people wanted the rauchbier recipe from SWIRCA.

6# Beechwood smoked Munich malt
4# Munich malt
5 oz. Debittered black malt
8 oz. maltodextrin
.80 oz. German Traditions hops 7.5 AA 60 min.
German lager yeast WLP 830

To smoke the malt, put the grain to be smoked in a bucket and add about a pint of water. Dry malt will absorb very little smoke! Mix the water with the grain and put on screens in the smoker, very thin layers. About 2 hours at low heat should give plenty of smoke character.
Mash at 151F for 1 hr. Boil about a gallon of first runnings for 20 minutes to carmelize and then add rest of wort. Add hops and boil an additional 60 min. Ferment at 50F

[Chris Norrick]

I got my first Weizenbock done this morning. I'm seeing a trend in these bigger beers using BIAB where I don't get as high an efficiency as the lower gravity beers. This one came in at 74% which is fine but I was expecting 80% and built the grain bill as such. I also grew up a bunch of yeast to churn out a 8%+ beer and it's not going to be close to that.

Any who, I split this batch between two fermentors and I'm going to add some pawpaw pulp to one. I thinking I'll wait till most of the fermentation is done to add it. I'm wondering if I should bake it first before I add it. Any thoughts? I've not done any fruit additions to beer that I can remember.

Recipe
8lb 12oz German Dark Wheat Malt
4lb 6oz German Pilsner Malt
1lb 12oz US Munich 10L Malt
7.00 oz German Sauer(Acid) Malt
7.00 oz Belgian Special B
7.00 oz US Caramel 40L Malt
4.50 oz UK Pale Chocolate Malt (cold steeped)

154 F Single Step BIAB with mashout.

1.60 oz German Hallertauer Mittlefruh 4.0 %

White Labs WLP300-Hefeweizen Ale. 3 months old. Did a two step starter, 2L each.

Notes:
BIAB 5gal 90 min boil: Strike 9.93 gal at 160.59 F via Simple BIAB Calculator. I think these are too high. Adjust down. I calculate 9.1 gallons needed using .3 qt/lb absorbtion of grain a 1.6 gal/hr boil off rate and leaving behind .25 gal to trub and 5.5 going to fermenter.

60% Dilution of RO water. 6 gal RO + 3.93 filtered tap. 1g CaSO4 + 5g CaCL2. Chloride 71 ppm, Sulfate 52 ppm, Chloride / Sulfate Ratio 1.37. Target 5.51 pH at room temp.

Used 10 oz total of the 40L crystal to use it up. Also cold-steeped the chocolate. Used some German Tradition hops to make up the missing amount of Hallertauer hops. Maybe .25 oz

Squeezed bag weighs approx 22 lb. Grist weighed 16.375 lb dry. If my calculations are correct that would be .165 qt/lb absorption rate.

[Jam095]

Brewed my second all grain batch this evening; did a Honey Blonde clone (BIAB). Everything went well except I just realized I didnt do a mashout this time around. My OG still came out great though! IBrewmaster program figured for 70% efficieny, and i hit 71%.

9# Special pale
12 oz. Munich 10L.
12 oz. Carapils
60 min. boil
3 additions of German Hallertaur-
.5 oz. 60 min.
.25 oz. 30 min.
.25 oz. 10 min.
1.2 # Honey- flame out
1 pkg. US-05
(OG 1.056)

[JohnD]

Brewed a Flanders Red today. Now the only thing to do is wait.... a year ! It should be ready about the same time as the Parmesan I made over the weekend.

[Chris Norrick]

I racked my Flander's Brown again last night. It seemed to have more yeast sediment than I would prefer for extended aging. It had just started forming a thin white pellicle. It has some nice souring already but sort of one dimensional.

I added in a vial of the platinum strain White Labs WLP 665 Flemish Ale Blend to it for more character. I also added in 1 oz of French oak chips that I boiled for a few minutes to reduce the tannins.

I think this is going to be a good one. The color and clarity were beautiful.

[Tom Wrinkles]

Oatmeal Stout fermenting at a steady 68 degrees. It will be ready for the big turkey!

[Don]

Oatmeal Stout fermenting at a steady 68 degrees. It will be ready for the big turkey!

Thats way too cold... You better take it up @ 10 degs

(never listen to a person who's at vegas losing his house, and drinking free beer)

[sirgiovanni]

8.5% pumpkin