northern brewer barleywine!

i did the 3.3lb LME at boil and 9.9lb LME at 15 minutes, then realized that the temp was down to 190 or so. i gave it another 15 minutes to warm back up, then timed it for 5 minutes more boil time. that should probably be in the instructions. also, the need for a bigger yeast starter should be in there too. 1.090 sg! i overshot the 1.086 sg indicated in the instructions. if the starter i prepared is any good, this could get explosive in a few hours. i put the fermenter in the basement bathtub to catch anything, should it get too active.

i have a bad feeling that i'll be going out to get another pack of 1948 neobritania, 'cause there were too many floating questions about the starter. it ended up with about 400ml of slurry plus another 400 ml of spent wort. it should be good, but i'll believe it when i see it. it seems to be the same volume as the pack was, though that was probably mostly nutrients. we'll see in the next 48 hours.

i added the dry hop bag to the hop head late last night. probably going to bottle that next weekend.

inki's brown bottling day -- brown sugar!

i'm using 3.7 oz of brown sugar as priming for inki's brown (big river brown ale). bottling with my baby tonight :-)

the hop head double ipa is still at 1020, and it tastes good enough to drink right out of the bright tank with no carbonation. carbonation would just be an extra feature. i still have to dry hop, perhaps this beer could get even better?

big starter for a big beer

[3/14-17] i broke down and got a barleywine kit from northern brewer, as well as my first liquid yeast, wyeast 1948 neobritania. i was advised that one pack wouldn't be enough for such a big beer (estimated 1.086 og), and got a 2l starter kit to build up the starter to at least 290 billion cells.

lots of vague advice online, most relying on the yeast counts being predictable and making a lot of assumptions. since thursday, i've made a 1300ml starter (1.040 DME), chilling it friday, pouring off the starter beer, and adding another 1300ml of starter wort. i hope i chilled long enough and didn't pour off a bunch of good yeast!

according to my triangulation of various sources and calculators i need 400 ml of slurry (4.5 billion cells per ml) or 4l (~1 gallon) of starter! the starter has blown its top a couple of times, being as obnoxious as warm soda during high krausen. it's looking super-healthy, but i might end up getting another pack or so depending on how the starter looks tomorrow. i think i'll pitch, then see how the gravity looks after a week. might just re-pitch if it looks stuck. gotta make some mistakes in order to figure it out.

links:

mrmalty

homebrew post

neobritania info

palmer on yeast

wyeast calculator

midwest's documentation

racking/gravity for hop head ipa and inki's brown

i racked inki's brown and hop head double ipa to secondary last week sometime. both measured 1.020 today, which is a little disturbing, since the brown should be from 1.010-12 and the hop head should final at 1.016-18. not going to worry too much, i guess. i had an ill-advised tasting of the english bitter. it made the satisfying whoosh sound when uncapped, but was not super-carbonated and still had the green taste. not too bad for less than a week in the bottle. just need another week or two for the co2 to go into solution and the beer to condition.

english bitter bottled

after priming sugar (4oz this time, instead of 5), FG still at about 1.015. hopefully these bottles don't pop! the un-carbonated beer tastes like a nice mild dry beer. probably at about 3.5ABV

inki's brown could technically be bottled now, but i'm thinking that a little more time in the primary fermenter would be good. debating on whether to rack to secondary, but i think i'm going to be lazy and let her sit for today.

the hop head is done bubbling, even after moving it to the basement and rousing it a bit. probably time for the secondary. hrmmm. i'm tempted to rack both to secondary, but i just got done cleaning up after the bottling. maybe tomorrow.

english bitter at 1.012-14-ish

it's really hard to see through the bubbles, but i think this beer is ready to bottle. samples taste like a nice mild beer. not super-exciting, but something with which to stock the beer cellar.

hop head double ipa

i brewed the hop head double ipa recipe from midwest: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/hop-head-double-ipa.html. i diverged from the recipe by adding the last 3.3lb of LME 15 minutes before the end of the boil. ended up boiling 1 gallon in another pot because the 4 gallon was in the boilover danger zone after adding the first 6.6lb. also tried adding 2 gallons of tap water before pouring the cooled wort. wort was snow-cooled to 90 this time, and the temp was still around 70 at pitch time. used 2 tbs of powdered sugar for the starter, hopefully the gravity difference with the super-sweet wort won't affect it. SG was 1.074, overshooting the recipe's 1.067 a little. i couldn't find the airlock that i got at midwest, so i've used an s-trap, which fits ok in the new fermenter's grommet. wort tastes like hop stew, unsurprisingly. hopefully the dry hop with leaves will give it a good aroma, not just bittering.

the english bitter is still bubbling a little since i've been rousing it daily. gravity is at 1.014. gonna wait a day or so more before bottling. i haven't fussed so much about gravity before, but i want to avoid bottle bombs and have as much alcohol as i can get out of it.

i haven't touched the inki's brown. looks like it's settled down to conditioning.