Tuesday, February 8, 2011

February Tripel

Brew day for the February Tripel was indeed hectic. I had some serious shopping to do before getting down to business and this trip made me realize one important thing: I need to start buying in bulk and ahead of brew day. Not only will I save myself a lot of headache, but a few dollars as well.

I created a Brewing calendar and did a layout of the first 5 months of the year, patting myself on the back for being so forward thinking. The calendar is a great addition to by process, to be sure, but it's also not the end of the line. I left my house at 10:30 with my shopping list and about an hour before I was planning on starting the boil.

One of the first things that I wanted to look for was Chinese Rock Sugar. I called Sun on Congress St. Friday and they assured me that they had what I was looking for. When I arrived, I was brought to the candy section and pointed to a box of "Yellow Rock Candy". I picked up the box, flipped it around, attempted to read the ingredients, flipped it around again... This couldn't be right. Why was it yellow? I asked again, trying to be more specific, but they had nothing else in the form of rock sugar.

I decided to hit up Mitpheap on Washington Ave. Unfortunately, I found the same situation. Odd varieties of "rock candy", but not really anything I felt safe purchasing. I gave up and decided I'd either ask Rob at Maine Brewing or just use Belgian Candy Sugar. Finally getting to the brew store, Rob had no idea what I was talking about, so I decided to just skip it and go with the Belgian*. No big deal.

The second part of my dilemma came when I arrived home. I was short on time and started setting everything out to get ready. My daughter Jasmine was coming to town to give me a hand brewing and I was already running late. That is when I noticed it: I forgot to pick up a grain bag. I couldn't start the boil without it. I considered straining it before it hit boil, but decided against it. Lucky for me, my lovely wife Eva volunteered to go back to the brew store and pick up a handful. End of crisis. Or so I thought.

Issue number 3. 2/3 of the malt extract I picked up were wrong. I needed 9.9 pounds of Light Malt, but I accidentally picked up 3.3 of light and 6.6 of Extra Light. Not much of a big deal, but it shaved off a few points on my gravity. I went with it, as I was in the middle of the pre-boil, deciding that it would work out fine.

Waking up Monday morning I found what I hope to be my last issue. I blew the top off my fermenter. I know that this happens and have heard hilarious stories from other brewing friends of this happening, but have never needed to deal with the clean-up myself. I guess it's to be expected with such a high gravity beer (1.081 measured). Fun stuff.

The rest of the brew went off fine and dandy. I bottled the January IPA after dry hopping and it's tasting pretty good. Not quite as hoppy as I thought it was going to be, but good for a first attempt. The February Tripel fermentation subsided a bit today and I dropped a pound of brown sugar into the fermenter and roused it back up. Even with the silly problems I had, I think this is going to turn out very nice. I am planning on racking it to secondary in about 10 days and seeing where it goes.

Brew #2 for 2011 is well on it's way and I'm looking forward to #3. Next up is a porter. Simple, straight forward and it should be ready while we still have some snow on the ground.

If you'd like to see my recipies, check out my Hopville account here: http://hopville.com/brewer/recipes/seavers

You can see some photos from the day here: Brew Day @ Flickr

* I eventually found out that what they had at Sun was in fact what I was looking for.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Busy Saturday

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. My January IPA has been dry hopped in secondary and ready to bottle. So far, this is tasting downright DIRTY (in a good way of course).  Once I get a taste tomorrow, I'll post more.

On the brew side, I've got my lovely daughter Jasmine to give me a hand with the February Tripel. This is going to be a good one to keep around for a while. After bottling it around 2/20, I plan on letting it bottle condition for a couple months.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Look for a couple of posts with pictures(!) tomorrow!