Golden Java Chocolate Milk Stout - Round 3

Today I'm brewing the third and slightly modified version of my Golden Java Chocolate Milk Stout. This version will be donated and poured at the Mountain Brewers Festival in Idaho Falls this June. For details on the previous versions of this recipe, see the original post. This round I'm going a tad higher with the gravity with a target O.G. of 1.065. I'm using Full Pint malt in place of the Fawcett Pearl Malt, and Honey Malt in place of the Crystal 45. I'm also changing the hops a bit as well as the coffee in the coffee toddy. As with the previous attempts, this beer pays homage to Noble Ale Works' Naughty Sauce. Here's the recipe as I'm making it today:

8.75# Great Western Full Pint Malt
0.75# Flaked Oats
0.68 # Gambrinus Honey Malt
1.0 # Lactose (10 min)
12g Magnum (60 min)
14g EKG (10 min)
28g EKG (0 min)
Wyeast Yeast Nutrient
0.5 Whirlfloc
Coffee Toddy (at kegging)
The Bomb Tincture (at kegging)
US-05

Mash at 154F for 80 minutes, 90 minute boil, ferment at 65F.

Brew Water
Nothing fancy here. I filled the HLT with 8 gallons of carbon filtered tap water and diluted it with 3 gallons of RO water.

Brewing Notes
No issues during the brew session. I hit the target O.G. exactly at 1.065. Yeast was re-hydrated and pitched at 61F then gradually warmed to 65F.

Drew Way - The Bomb Cacao Nib & Vanilla Tincture
6 oz Vodka (I use Tito's)
1 Vanilla Bean, split and scraped and chopped into 3/4" lengths
3 oz TCHO Roasted Cacao Nibs
Mix the vodka and vanilla bean (and parts) in a tight sealing jar. Shake every day, several times, for 7 days.
After seven days, add the nibs for another 4 days, continue to shake
Strain out ad discard the nibs and vanilla bean bits.
Place the extract in the freezer overnight.
In the morning, carefully scrape out the fat cap of cocoa butter and discard. I've never really had any fat cap with the TCHO nibs. I'm not sure if the roasting renders out most of the fat or what.

Coffee Toddy
3 oz fresh ground Ethiopian Yirgacheffe
3 cups chilled RO water
Cold brew for 24 hours in the fridge with a French Press. Add at kegging/bottling.

Update 5/24/2016
I started on the coffee toddy last night. The plans are to get it kegged tonight and start carbing things up. This coffee smells amazing; tons of chocolate character. Thanks to my buddy Jeff who suggested and provided the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans for this batch. I went with 3oz in 3c of water this time. I'll probably dose it with 2/3 of the toddy and go from there. The Bomb tincture is also done and is chilling in the freezer. I used a stainless pour over coffee filter to strain out the nibs. My hope was that it would leave behind all the sediment. It did, but it also clogged quite a bit. Seems like a mesh somewhere between the super fine coffee filter and the not so fine kitchen strainer would work better.

Update 5/25/2016
I kegged this beer last night and it's currently chilling under pressure in my keezer.

Update 6/6/2016
This beer turned out really well and was a pretty big hit at the beer fest. It ended up being the first keg to kick, I think with 2 hours left in the fest. I wouldn't mind a little more coffee character. To me, this coffee had a lot of chocolate character, so paired with The Bomb tincture, chocolate was more prominent than coffee.

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Rye Saison - Red Wine Barrel Round 2

Today I'm brewing a Rye Saison for Dallas' Red Wine Barrel Project. This is a recipe the Dallas has brewed many times and I think it's a fantastic candidate for a sour barrel. Below is the recipe adjusted for my system's efficiency.

9.0# 2.0oz Avangard German Pilsner
2.0# 4.0oz Briess Rye Malt
7.0oz Avangard Munich I Malt
4.0oz Castle Aromatic Malt
28g Sterling (60 min)
56g Sterling (Whirlpool 30 min)
28g Saaz (Whirlpool 30 min)
0.5 Whirlfloc
Wyeast Yeast Nutrient
Wyeast 3711 (1L starter)

Mash at 152F, 90 minute boil, chill to 65F, allow to free-rise up to 77F

Water Profile
To 10 gallons of distilled water, I added:
6.3g Epsom salt
3.2g Calcium chloride
2.4g Baking soda
0.8g Chalk

Update 4/19/2016
No major issues during this brew session. I tried out a stainless steel hop spider I bought from a buddy of mine before he moved. It's larger than the one I bought from Utah Biodiesel, but the mesh isn't as fine. It let more debris through which meant my pre-chiller filter had to deal with more debris and the flow was much lower than normal. I let the temp stabilize overnight then pitched the yeast yesterday morning and it was showing active signs of fermentation by the time I got home.

Update 5/23/2016
This beer went into a keg yesterday. It'll be going,into the barrel next weekend which means I'll be getting 5-ish gallons of soured Baltic porter next weekend too.

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Rood BugFarm 2016

Today I'm brewing up another take on The Rare Barrel's red base beer, so essentially the same recipe as my Rood Mélange 2016 a few months back. The main differences on this version is I'm mashing higher at 160F and for the yeast, I got my hands on some ECY01 Bug Farm. I've been wanting to try this yeast as well as ECY20 BugCounty, but they are difficult to come by. Whenever this blend pops up for sale, it usually sells out in a matter of hours. This time I didn't hesitate and managed to order a bottle from love2brew.com before they ran out.

6.0# 13 oz Dingemans Pilsner Malt

1.0# 3 oz Weyermann Pale Wheat Malt
7 oz Crisp Light Crystal Malt 60L
7 oz Flaked Oats (lauter)
7 oz Special Aromatic Malt
7 oz Spelt Malt
1.5-ish oz Carafa III (lauter, for color adjustment)
14.0g Aged Debittered Hops (60 min)
0.5 Whirlfloc
Wyeast Yeast Nutrient
ECY01 BugFarm

Mash at 160F for 60 mins, 90 min boil, ferment at room temp. Because of the lactobacillus in the blend, no aeration.

Brewing Notes
One issue today...at the end of the sparge, I emptied the little bit of unused sparge water into a bucket. I also disconnected what I thought was the hose from the mash, when in fact it was the hose for pumping the wort from the mash into the boil kettle. This siphoned a couple gallons of wort into the bucket with the water. So...I added that to the contents of the bucket back into the BK (along with the extra water). I ended up boiling much harder than normal in order to evaporate the extra gallon of water. I still ended up with a bit more volume than I was planning on (about 5.5.) but it got me in the ballpark. No other issues to speak of. I chilled to about 64F and pitched the BugFarm. I'll let it free-rise to room temp which should be right about 70F.

Update 4/3/2016
Pitched yeast yesterday afternoon at about 3:30PM and this morning fermentation is taking off with about an inch of krausen.

Update 7/18/2017
Pulled a sample tonight and the pH on this beer is down to 3.38. The acidity is a little different compared to some of my other sour reds...definitely seems more lemon-like than pie cherry. Flavor profile isn't quite as complex either...not bad, but I was hoping for something more. I think this one would definitely benefit from some blending.

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Big Bad Barrel #3

Today I brewed a 10 gallon batch for my club's barrel project. This is batch #3 going into the barrel, and it's based on Atrial Rubicite from Jester King. Same as the previous Big Bad Barrels, each participant will brew their portion at home, doing a clean primary, then we'll combine them in the barrel and let the barrel bugs do their souring thing. When sufficiently soured, we'll empty the barrel and each participant will add the fruit of their choosing. 

The grain bill is pretty simple and is as follows. I'm actually using spelt malt instead of wheat malt. Spelt is an heirloom variety of wheat and I have a ton on hand.

Target OG 1.040
80% Pilsner
20% Wheat Malt
10 IBUs max - US Goldings or Aged Hops or a blend of US Goldings and Aged Hops (60 mins)
Yeast Nutrient
Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison or 1028/London Ale
2-3 # per gallon Raspberries in secondary - This will add ~ 0.008 gravity points, bringing the gravity up to ~ 1.048

Mash at 160F

Brewing Notes

No issues. My gravity came in at 1.041, so just a point higher than planned. I used a blend of aged hops, some well over a year old, some within the last year. I also bought both Wyeast strains and pitched a blend of the two. I'm starting fermentation at 68F.

Update 12/3/2017
I got around to putting this beer on fruit. I did three variants for this beer.

1. Raspberry - Keeping with the spirit of the base beer, the first variant got 1.5# per gallon of red raspberries (4 gallons).
2. Passion Fruit - This variant got 1# per gallon of passion fruit (3 gallons).
3. Blood Orange - This variant got 1# per gallon Blood Orange, 14g each of El Dorado and Mosaic, plus 50g of hibiscus in 425ml, and a little bit of orange zest from my homegrown Mandarin oranges (3 gallons).

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Solera #4

I'm about ready to pull 5 gallons off my Solera, so today I'm brewing a batch to replace the 5 gallons I'm pulling out. I'm calling this Solera #4 as it's the fourth five gallon batch going into the 15 gallon Solera. This is a pretty basic grain bill, just pilsner and spelt malts. I'm mashing high on this batch, ensuring there's some long-term food supply for the critters. Here's the recipe as I'm making it today.

Target O.G. 1.065

8# 11oz Pilsner Malt
2# 3oz Spelt Malt
28g Aged Hops (60 min)
Brett Barrel III INISBC913

Mash at 160F, 90 min boil

Nothing fancy on the water chemistry today. I filled my HLT with 4 gallons of RO and 7 gallons of carbon-filtered tap water. I won't need that much water, but I just use leftover water during cleanup.

Brewing Notes

No issues during this session. Gravity came in a couple points lower than target at 1.061.

Update 3/23/2016
I pulled a sample last night. It has some really nice fruity notes going on, and mild funk. I was a little worried because I used the Brett Barrel III yeast that I'd saved from the CS Brett Experiment. It had been sitting in the fridge for a while, so a lot of the cells had definitely died off. I made a starter to try to revive the surviving yeast and get it going. It seemed to work, but there was a noticeable lag before there were visible signs of fermentation. Also, the starter had a fairly strong berry aroma. Even with the starter, I believe it was under-pitched. So long story short, I'm glad that I wasn't able to pick up on any obvious off-flavors.

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