Père Noël de Bruxelles: Christmas in June

Racking the BTB, reusing the yeast cake!

Today was a wonderful brew day.  I woke up bright and early this morning and got my strike water and mash ready.  I stabilized the temperature at 150° and left it alone...for the next four hours.  I went to my church choir gig and left the mash alone to do its thing, which actually isn't a bad thing at all; it actually gives the grain ample time to convert, and pretty much can only affect the result for the better.  Anyway, after singing this morning, I came back and found that my mash tun had only gone down 4 degrees over four hours.  Awesome!  I was able to really get into brew day and do my thang from there on out.

For those who are scratching their heads, make no mistakes; this is a CHRISTMAS beer.  But Jeff, why are you brewing it in late June?  Well, I want to give the beer a few months to age into beautiful wonderfulness so it will be just perfect for wintertime.  This one should weigh in at about 8.2% ABV, a really nice strength for a winter warmer.  Here is the recipe (remember this is a half batch):

Anticipated OG: 1.084
Actual OG: 1.084 (f yeah 75% efficiency)
Anticipated SRM: 15 °L
Anticipated IBU: 34

5 lbs Franco-Belges pilsener malt
1 lb Flaked wheat
1 lb light Munich malt
.25 lbs Belgian amber (biscuit) malt

.5 lbs 90°L Belgian Candi syrup

1 oz. Hallertauer pellets @60 minutes
.5 oz. East Kent Goldings (I've been in a wicked EKG mood lately) @15 min
2 lbs dried Turkish apricots (no preservatives) @10 min, then added to the fermenter
.5 oz fresh-crushed coriander seed @10 min

.5 oz French oak cubes in secondary

Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes, yeast cake reused from Belgian Table Beer

Collecting sweet sweet runoff

Amidst the mashing, vorlaufing, sparging, racking, and boiling of stuff, I also managed to bottle my delicious Lucky Leaf summer cider.  It is really tasty and should be ready to drink in a couple of days! 

C is for cider, that's good enough for me

Overall, brew day was fantastic and I got so much done, it just felt good.  Everything went smoothly, not too many hurdles, and I just know that this Christmas beer will be a winner.  Can't wait to see how it progresses over the next few weeks, and then in the bottle over the next few months!  Should be awesome.  Stay tuned for its release in December, and stay tuned for the upcoming brew day of my English Christmas beer, the Figgy Pudding Ale.  It will be a very similar beer, but with its own uniqueness.  Delicious!  It will be hard to wait six months for them but it will be worth it, and I'll have some great beer (and cider) to drink in the meantime.

Prost,
Jeff

Beautiful Weekend=Productive Brewing

Stout FTW

This weekend has blessed us with warmer temperatures and bright, sunny days, so I have had the opportunity to brew yet another excellent batch of beer! Saturday afternoon, I began by racking (siphoning) Der Winterweizen into a secondary fermenter. It will sit in that carboy for about another week, and by next weekend it should be ready for bottling. Thus, with my primary freed up I was able to get my second batch of 2011 going. If you remember correctly, this batch is an Irish dry stout of low gravity that should be ready to drink within about two or three weeks. Brew day went really well, and I was joined by a couple of extra friends this time who helped me in the brewing process. While Claire was a big help as usual, my good buddies Ben and Victor were good hands in the latter part of the brewing process as well.

A few things went even better yesterday than two weeks ago, not the least of which was my efficiency increasing. I think this was partially due to my doing a mashout (raising the wort to 168° at the end of the mash) and letting the batch sparge water actually sit for 10 minutes to absorb all of the sugars. Cleanup was well delegated and more efficient, too, and I think that we'll have the system down really soon. My one beef was still with the mash temperature. I realize now that I need to well overshoot the temp for my strike water and let it get down to the actual strike temp after I have poured it into my mash tun. This way, I won't end up with a lower mash temperature (and a lighter bodied beer) than what I want. I was able to raise the temp up with some boiling water, though, so the body of the beer shouldn't suffer. I also clearly got full conversion, because my starting gravity was even higher than projected. All is working well and I will have mastered my new system very soon.

Stay tuned for next week when we bottle Der Winterweizen, rack the stout into secondary for clearing, and brew a 2-gallon batch of English mild in honor of Hogsmeade Weekend!

Review and tasting notes, 3/13/11