Wick's Home Brew
I have been reading this book “Microbrewed Adventures” by Charlie Papazian. Great read. Describes each brewery he visits and respective brewer as an adventure in the craft beer industry. This guy has got to have one of the best positions/job (if you can call it a job) ever! I often wonder what his source of actual income is, but he is one of the pioneers of the home brew movement. But onto to my own home brew adventure. Now you may wonder where us batch #4? Well what happened was I believe I let some contaminates get into this batch. How? I have a few theories. I also believe that I didn’t use enough yeast and when I bottled there were no more yeast alive to react with my corn sugar to naturally carbonate the beer. I have an idea I may try. Who knows. But I think it did not ferment down to it’s final gravity range. Home brewing is an experiment, right? So I scratch that batch and onward to my next batch.
I have really started liking to drink pale ales as of late. Talk to me two to three years ago and ask me if I wanted a pale ale, I would have passed on your offer. Well my palate has changed quite a bit since I have been on this craft beer movement. I have taken a liking to the Tommyknocker Pick Axe Pale Ale. Fruity flavors, bitterness all in my pint that I get at the local bar here in town. Well this book I have been reading has recipes for beers at each brewery Charlie has visited. I have always wanted to try the Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, but of course living in Mississippi I cannot find it around here. In the back of the book I find a home brew recipe adapted for the 60 min IPA. So me being one to try things jumped right into it. But I adapted the recipe to some ingredients I already had here at the house. So which made my order to Brewmasters Warehouse a little cheaper. Instead of using all pale LME. I had 5 lbs of extra light DME handy. So I just ordered enough LME so I could achieve some of the expected color and also increased the amount of caramel malt grains. I also changed the type of hops i used because Brewmasters Warehouse was out of warrior hops and they suggested I use Columbus instead. The smelled great!
Living here in the south we have devilish hot summers and it already feels like summer has already hit us. So I needed a way to keep my fermenter at around 70 degrees or below. Thanks to Twitter a couple people suggested the t-shirt and a fan method. I must say it is working pretty well I filled a large cooler up with water about half way, put my carboy into the cooler then wrapped t-shirts all around it and then put a small fan blowing on it constantly. I checked the temp earlier this evening and it is hovering around 67-68 degrees. The ambient temp is 74-75 degrees. Not too shabby. I do want to try to build a “Son of a Fermentation Chiller”. Looks very nifty and ingenious. Google it and you’ll see what I am talking about.
So my IPA is fermenting away. Once it’s time to rack to the secondary I will dry hop wit 15 grams of hops and let it sit covered in t-shirts with a fan blowing on it for a couple weeks and then bottle.
I am soon gonna post pics of my sweet stout and hefeweizen and let ya know my review on those. I also want to start reviewing beers I try. I’m still new to the craft beer revolution and am still developing a palate to the different flavors you find in each beer. But so far I am loving every minute of it, even if I did screw up one batch.
Cheers!
