Cherry wood-smoked...erm...amber?

Well folks, I'm a couple days late with my update, but I brewed up my latest batch of beer this past Friday night.  I recently posted the recipe, and as I said, this was intended to be a smoky brown ale.  I finally got a new probe thermometer as my previous one had malfunctioned, and everything went great with the mash.  I hit the temperature dead on and only lost about two degree over the course of the hour, even with the cold weather.  The only weirdness came when I collected the runnings, and saw what appeared to be a rather light-colored wort.  I didn't think much of it, but after I ran the boil and tried to make it nice and vigorous to get some extra caramelization/color, the wort was still very light colored.  Beginning to get somewhat suspicious, I went into BrewPal on my phone and calculated what the recipe would be without the half pound of chocolate malt that I planned to have in there.  Welp, turns out that without it, I would end up with a beer of only about 11° Lovibond, almost exactly the light amber color that my beer appeared to be.  Methinks that Joe from Princeton Homebrew accidentally left out the chocolate malt, which incidentally was the last ingredient listed on my malt bill.  Oh well, it should still be really tasty, particularly given the rest of the malts in there, the lovely EKGs, and the WLP002 yeast, which has a great profile.

Dark picture, but nice big trub pyramid!

Mulling things over, I got a sort of crazy idea.  I thought to myself, "Gee, if I carbonate this beer naturally with malt extract, I'm just making a small amount of wort...why couldn't that wort be colored, flavorful wort?"  Well, I won't be kegging this one until after Thanksgiving, so I have time to think about it.  I do, however, really want this to be a brown ale, and I also have about 9-10 ounces of Carafa I in my stock right now.  I'm kinda leaning towards using that when I carb the beer.  If you are a homebrewer and have any knowledge from other folks/your own experience doing this, let me know your thoughts.  I really don't see how it would affect the beer negatively, seems like it would just be along the lines of carbing the beer with really dark DME.  Well, we'll see!  In the meantime, the beer is fermenting at a happy 66° [at 64° ambient], and it should come out great no matter what I decide to do with it...part of the joy of being a homebrewer is in the process and the unknown.

It's nice to have plenty of garage space for winter brewing!

Cicada Imperial Red Ale - Review

So, it must be the time of day or something, but I was unable to get a decent picture of the beer this afternoon...needless to say, I will try again and have a picture of the beer posted on this review very soon.  Rest assured, it is quite pretty.  I just wanted to get a review posted before that wonderful fresh hop aroma and flavor fades.


Cicada Imperial Red Ale, brewed 5/29/11:

Appearance: wonderful, rich deep amber with copper red hues; thick and rich creamy head that persists throughout with sticky lacing on the sides of the glass; slight haze from high hop content

Aroma: hops hops hops! grapefruit, complex fruity citrus and pine, with a light amount of cinnamon spice character, small nutty sweetness in the background

Flavor: bright, piney citrus up front with mild pineapple fruitiness and light cinnamon in the back of the hop character; bitterness is high but far from overwhelming...a deceiving 71 IBU on this bad boy (not to mention a deceiving 7.8% ABV...doesn't taste even close to that!); hop character melts into caramel malt flavors and light sweetness with a clean, dry finish

Mouthfeel: nice, big body with a really smooth feel; medium carbonation (I have had a 1-2 slightly overcarbonated bottles, but this one is perfect...glad I was conservative on the priming sugar)

Overall: This is a great beer, and I wouldn't really change anything about the recipe.  To me, this is my ideal big, bold, American ale.  More malt complexity than an Imperial IPA but tons of great American hop character, which is something that I tend to crave pretty often...must be in my Amurrican blood (my dad is also a bit of a hop head).  Definitely a beer that I can see brewing AT LEAST once a year.  Also, I think this would be amazing with New York extra-sharp cheddar.  Can't wait to brew this again and put it on tap (and thus have more control over uniform carbonation).

Dry-hopping and first taste of the imperial red

Sittin' pretty with some lovely FF dry hops

As indicated by my Twitter, yesterday I racked the Imperial Red to secondary and added an ounce of Falconer's Flight hops into the vessel to give the beer that extra fresh hop flavor and aroma that one can only achieve through dry-hopping.  My first taste of the beer was wonderful.  The specific gravity is down to 1.018, so this baby is almost fully attenuated and the taste will be pretty indicative of the finished product.  The up-front flavor is a delicious, citrusy hop bomb, but differently from your average IPA, this one has some serious biscuity, caramelly malt backing hop all of that bright hoppy flavor.  It is really tasty already and I can't wait to taste it after its two weeks of dry-hopping.  The beer is deceptively smooth for around 7.5% ABV, no nasty fusel alcohols or excessive esters, and I attribute that to the nice cool fermentation temperature (thank you, air conditioning).  Either way, this beer will be a great one to enjoy over the hot summer, and will almost definitely be one that I will re-do in the near future.  It's always nice to have a hoppy beer around for drinking, and this one will be no exception.

Cicada Imperial Red Ale

First brew in the new apartment!

Long brew day today...did all of the work myself since my lovely assistant had to work today.  I got started around 9 this morning to do the mash indoors.  It was great to have the convenience and comfort of doing an indoor mash, and it seems I finally have my cooler system down.  Held that guy at 153° for an entire hour and didn't lose a single degree!  Now that is good stuff.  Instead of the usual mashout/sparge method that I do, I did a double sparge, which can be seen in this excellent YouTube video by Don Osborn (I love Don Osborn!).  This was meant to increase my system efficiency and help me to get the maximum amount of extract out of this batch, since it is a pretty high gravity beer.  Good news is that it worked, and I hit 75% efficiency, up from my usual 70%.

After collecting the runnings, I headed outside with my turkey fryer and propane tank to get the boil rolling.  It started up great, coming to a boil in about 15 minutes, so I went ahead and added my first hop addition.  For this beer, I wanted to do a 90 minute boil so that I could achieve the right bitterness levels but also get a nice subtle caramelization, since this is an amber ale after all.  About fifteen minutes in--alas!--the flame started to die down, indicating that my propane tank was just about empty.  Welp, I decided to just take the brewpot off the turkey fryer, put it in a safe place, then put the rest of my stuff in the car and drive to get a refill.  It was a quick and easy trip, and I made it back to resume the rest of today's brewing.  The rest of the boil went smoothly, and I even caught one of the many obnoxious cicadas in my boiling wort this will not affect the taste at all (in fact, Jamil Zainasheff has had black widow spiders fall into the boil on same recipe of stout...on separate occasions!), but it sure as hell gave me a catchy--and appropriately ironic--name for the beer: the Cicada Imperial Red.  It will remind me of my scant few triumphs over those nasty cicadas during this summer.  As promised, here is the recipe for this beauty of an amber ale:

Recipe Specifics (All-Grain)
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5
Total Grain (Lbs): 14
Anticipated OG: 1.073
Actual OG: 1.075
Anticipated SRM: 16
Anticipated IBU: 72.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain
------
11 lbs. Muntons English Pale Malt (2.5°L)
1 lb. Munich Malt (10°L)
1 lb. Crystal Malt (40° L)
0.5 lbs. Special 'B' Malt (140°L)
0.5 lbs. Belgian Biscuit Malt (25°L)

Hops
------
1.0 oz. Columbus (Pellet 13% AA) @ 90 min. (gotta use these for more than just bittering sometime...nice aroma on 'em)
1.0 oz. Falconer's Flight (Pellet 10.5% AA) @45 min.
1.0 oz. Falconer's Flight (Pellet 10.5% AA) @ 5 min.
2.0 oz. Falconer's Flight (Pellet 10.5% AA) @ 0 min/flame out
1.0 oz. Falconer's Flight (Pellet 10.5% AA) dry hop 14 days in secondary

Extras
-------
1 tsp. Irish moss @ 15 Min.

Yeast
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Wyeast 1764 Rogue Pacman Yeast with an 800 mL starter made 48 hours ahead of time on a stir plate

Mash Schedule
-------------
Sacch Rest 60 min @ 153

5/29/11 Brewed by myself at Lee apartments in Nashville, TN
8/2/11 Review

Picture may not look like much, but it sure was nice to be able to do the mash in my pajamas

Yeast starter for Imperial Red (Amber) Ale

After the weeks of graduation hustle and bustle, I am finally able to get in a brew day again!  Yesterday, I got the yeast starter going (first yeast starter in the new apartment), which was much easier on a gas burner than on the McTyeire electric stove.  I made use of another one of my Rogue Pacman re-harvested yeast cultures, which was a little slower to start than the previous (yeasts lose some of their viability over time, so cultures that have been sitting around for awhile can be slower to start, but once they start going they're as good as when they're new), but sure enough was really moving by this morning.  I got a lot of satisfaction out of the $7.00 that I saved on this batch, which is high gravity and therefore slightly more expensive anyway.

My other mission yesterday was buying a whole truckload of Falconer's Flight hops to give this batch the amazing hoppy flavor for which it calls.  I also got my next recipe, a Belgian Table Beer similar to this one for summer that has got me really excited.

Basically, your average American Amber Ale (Fat Tire, Red Seal, etc...there are MANY) will have a nice hop character similar to an American Pale Ale, along with a little more caramel malt flavor to balance it out and an ABV of around 5%, of course with a beautiful reddish color.  The brew that I'll be churning out tomorrow is inspired by that tradition, but has been amped up in the style of a West Coast Red Ale and then turned up even a bit more from that style, meaning higher ABV (mine should land at around 7.5%) and LOTS more hop character.  Think IPA (India Pale Ale) when compared to a pale ale...bigger, bolder, hoppier.  This beer will be similar to a double/imperial IPA in strength and hop character, but with a lot more caramel sweetness and malt background.  Stay tuned for brew day highlights and the recipe to be posted on this blog tomorrow!

Even when just making a yeast starter; relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew!