Imperial Walker Texas Ranger Stout

(Imperial Walker Texas Ranger Stout served in an Ommegang glass obtained from Capital Ale House's Ommegang steal the glass night)

Recipe Post

• Style: Imperial Stout. 8.5% ABv, 55 IBUs
• Appearance: dark black with reddish brown hues on the edges when held up to light. An off white head forms with a moderate pour and remains for a minute or two.
• Aroma: mild coffee, chocolate and roastiness. hints of sweetness
• Taste: tastes like it smells. coffee and dark chocolate flavors dominate and are present thanks to the moderate amounts roasted barley in the grain bill. Coffee chocolate caramel sweetness gives away to hop bitterness from a large single addition of Challenger hops and warming alcohol.
• Mouthfeel: medium bodied, silky but on the thin side for the style.

This is the best beer I have made. Its awesome when something turns out as well as you hope it will. Initially planned to be an imperial bourbon oak aged stout, I decided to forgo the bourbon oak aging and just bottle this stout because it tasted so promising.

The only thing I would improve in a future brewing is to boost the alcohol content or alter the grain bill to leave a tad more unfermentable sugars around for more body and a chewier mouthfeel. The beer finished at 1.014, on the semi-thin side for the Imperial Stout I have in mind. This is one beer I will brew again.

I sent a couple bottles of the stout and Chili Lager off to the CASK Beer Blitz competition taking place in December.

Tweedd Ale

Recipe: http://ahomebrewlog.blogspot.com/2009/09/tweedd-ale.html

• Style: Pale Ale, 5.6% abv, 32 IBUs
• Appearance: golden and clear. gentle snow white head forms with a heavy pour and remains to the last sip.
• Aroma: sweet and mildly fruity/floral.
• Mouthfeel: light to medium levels of carbonation. light bodied.
• Flavor: Fruity with mild malt flavors and hints of honey. Very little bitterness. Very drinkable.

This beer has been very well liked by all that have tried it. Especially non-beer enthusiasts like my mom. Its a mild character beer with a gentle sweet fruity aroma and flavor that has none of the American "C" hop character that dominates a lot of the American Pale Ales. I attribute its widespread likeability to its lack of assertive hop bitterness and its sweet fruitiness. I have also enjoyed this beer, and it is the one I have reached for when arriving home after work.

I attribute the fruitiness to the warmer fermentation temperature (72°F) and the European low alpha hops (Williamette, Crystal[not officially European, but a US noble hop substitute], and Fuggles). This beer has really helped me get a better idea of the vastly different characters that different hop varieties can impart to a finished beer. Although it is moderately hopped with 32 IBUs, there is absolutely no assertive bitterness or grapefruity aroma or flavors.

This is by far the clearest beer I have brewed. It is brilliantly clear, even when cold (no chill haze). At this point I am assuming that the Super-Kleer I added before bottling eventually got to work. It took about four to five weeks in the bottle, two of them stored at 32°F to really work its full magic but its effects are obvious. Despite this, I am not decided if I will use it again. I want to try a few more techniques and agents before settling on a clarifier. I am currently assessing boil added Whirlfloc tablets and improved chilling, which I used in an IPA I brewed a couple weeks ago.

Sacrilege

http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=nutrition&category=food.for.fitness&conitem=d39a84487e544210VgnVCM10000030281eac____#

Fermentation Fridge - Temperature Control

Since the summer I have been putting together and upgrading a fermentation fridge one piece at a time. The fridge (pictured above) can hold two 6.5 gallon carboys and can maintain a steady temperature year round. It has a range between 35°F and 80+ °F. This is a quick overview of the setup.

I keep the fridge in the garage where temperatures fluctuate drastically throughout the day. In the summer the fridge and digital thermostat alone worked to maintain fermentation temps at about 50°F for lagers and 68°F for ales. Once the cold fall and winter weather hit, I needed a way to keep it warm inside. I solved that problem by putting a waterbed heater in the bottom of the fridge on the second stage of the temperature controller. Later I added a fan to solve the problem of uneven heating that the waterbed heater causes. Without the fan, the bottoms of the carboys can get quite warmer than other parts.

The equipment I used consists of:

• Old beaten up fridge a friend was getting rid of (free)
• Fan another friend gave me (free, thanks Elliott)
• Used waterbed heater (ebay $20)
• Ranco Dual Stage Digital Temperature Controller (~$90).

I drilled a hole in the side of the fridge to run the wiring for the heater, fan, and temperature sensor probe through. I also drilled holes through the horizontal barrier that divides the top freezer from the lower fridge to allow the cold air from the freezer to sink into the fridge for more efficient cooling as well as colder possible temperatures in the fridge portion.

I managed to find a prewired Ranco temperature control unit, which I recommend unless you have any experience with electrical wiring. The unit has two plugs to which your heating/cooling devices connect for power, and will power each one on/off in accordance with the temperatures you program it to maintain. I attach the temperature sensor directly to the outside of the carboy inside using a piece of electrical tape.

The Ranco temp control unit is the costliest portion of this endeavor. However the warm fuzzy feeling you will get every time the digital display tells you the exact temperature of your fermenting brews is well worth it over time. Furthermore fermentation temperature control will greatly improve the beer you brew.

One word of advise I can offer on the use of the dual stage controller is to make sure you allow a 1 degree buffer between the two stage temperatures (i.e. cooling circuit at 69°F, heating circuit at 67°F) with a 1 degree differential. If you do not allow an appropriate buffer between the circuits, the heating and cooling circuits can rapidly cut on and off trying to cool and then warm repeatedly. With the one degree buffer, the temp should eventually rest on the buffer temp and the heating and cooling circuits will activate as needed.

Some people use chest freezers as fermentation chambers. However, I believe that upright refrigerators like mine are more well endowed for this purpose if you are just fermenting a couple beers at a time. First off, it is very difficult to lift a filled 6.5 gallon carboy in and out of a chest freezer. Second of all, a chest freezer does not allow as good of a view of the action as an upright refrigerator. Just open the door and quickly see how fermentation is progressing.

Despite several recent nights in which outside temps plunged into the 30's the fridge has been maintaining a steady 68°F. Pictured in the fridge now is an IPA I brewed this weekend.

Liquid vs Dry Yeast

The American Homebrewing Association recently launched a new website. It includes a national list of competitions as well as some free excerpts from their monthly magazine Zymurgy. I came across this article on the site today on the topic of Liquid vs Dry Yeast. The article presents the outcome of a controlled experiment comparing liquid and dry yeasts. This is a topic I have seen a lot of discussion taking place on in brewing forums as well as one I have been considering lately.

Due to technological advances in yeast production over the past decade, some brands of dry yeast are no longer to be looked down on as inferior to liquid. There are a few brands of dry yeast out now that can produce beers of equal quality when compared to their liquid counterparts. Fermentis is one of the leading producers of this high quality dry yeast and it is their yeast that is used in the Zymurgy experiment. I have put their Safale S-05 as well as their Saflager 34/70 strains to use a total of a few times already with great success.

Two areas where dry yeast shines that are not pointed out in the Zymurgy article are value and ease of use. A single 11.5 gram packet of Fermentis dry yeast costs about $3 or less and contains over 200 billion yeast cells; a quantity that is enough to provide an optimal pitching rate for a 5 gallon batch of 1.060 O.G. beer without even making a starter. This saves time, money, and eliminates the risk of infection during starter preparation. A normal portion of White Labs or Wyeast liquid yeast costs about $7 and contains only 100 billion yeast cells. So not only does the liquid yeast cost twice as much, either two packs of it or a yeast starter are necessary to reach proper pitching rate for a 5 gallon batch.

Dry yeast isn't available in strains appropriate for all beer styles. Liquid yeasts made by Wyeast and White Labs still offer a much larger variety of specialty strains, many that are the actual strains used in the production of world famous beers. But for some styles dry yeasts offer a value and ease of use that gives them a slight advantage in my opinion.

Mountains, Cider, and Meatapalooza Pale Ale

This weekend I hiked up Old Rag mountain in Western Virginia with a group of family and friends. Above are a couple pics I snapped along the way. Its a tough 8.8 mile hike that includes some treacherous rock navigation. Tons of sweet views. I'm still feeling the burn.

Last week I racked my 3 gallons of Hard Cider to secondary. Gravity readings read .996. Very dry but not too uncommon for a dry cider. The ABV should be around 8% on this one. A trace amount of apple aroma and character remain. I drank about 4 ounces of the stuff, it was good, with a little bit of apple skin on the finish. I neglected to add Pectic Enzyme on pitching day. Pectic Enzyme helps break down fruit matter to assist in juice extraction and aids in clarification. I've read that unpasteurized ciders like the one I used many times do not need the pectic enzyme (the heating process of pasteurization apparently dissolves fruit sediment to greater degree). But, just for good measure, I dissolved an appropriate dose of pectic enzyme in some boiled and cooled water and added to the secondary. The cider is chilling in secondary for another month now.

Yesterday I bottled my Meatapalooza Pale Ale. After two weeks in primary, the F.G read 1.005. This is very dry. I attribute the extremely low finishing gravity to fluctuations in my fermentation fridge's temperatures since winter has begun. The waterbed heater I use to maintain ale temps in the fridge during winter heated the carboy unevenly and caused the Safale US-05 yeast I used to go crazy one night (krausen overflowed the carboy and came out the airlock). Safale 05 is already known as a very vigorous beast of a strain and I believe the rising temperature assisted it in doing its thing to the extreme. Another explanation could be a low mash temperature which yielded an overly fermentable wort but I do not believe this was the cause. Although the the mash temp was on the low side at 150°F. Regardless the beer still tastes decent. Very light and thin. Still drinkable but not the best beer I've made. Kind of a high octane English Bitter.

I have a tendency to fail under pressures of social expectations. Because of this I was superstitious that brewing the Meatapalooza Pale Ale for the December barbecue/party was cursed with misfortune from the beginning. However, I believe the beer should still be drinkable and enjoyable by someone not looking for anything too special aside from a light refreshing beer. Carbonated tastes in a week or two will tell.

Bottled - Imperial Stout

(this one fermented very vigorously. look at that krausen)

After much deliberation I decided not to oak my imperial stout with the 1.5oz of heavy toast oak cubes that have been soaking in bourbon. There are a couple reasons for this. First, the beer just tastes too good already without the oak and bourbon. Second, I just can't wait an additional three to four weeks to age it on the cubes before drinking it.

I bottled the 5 gallons of stout last night after the disappointment of my IPA wore off. The final gravity reading measured 1.014 giving me a 8.5% abv stout. I truly hope the bottles condition and carbonate successfully because the beer tastes amazing even flat. The beer is sweet, malty, and full bodied with prominent roasted barley and caramel flavors ending in some hop bite. I chilled, drank, and enjoyed about 12 oz of it flat that were left over from the bottling bucket and hydrometer flask.

I still have the oak cubes soaking for a future brew. Who knows, maybe I will brew a second five gallon batch of this for oaking. If all continues to go well I will enter this one the December CASK Beer Blitz competition along with my Chile Lager.