Posts Tagged ‘homebrew’

Chocolate Espresso Stout

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

Today I’ve moved our fourth batch of chocolate stout into its secondary fermentation. The first batch was more of a porter. The second was solid, especially after about 10months of bottle conditioning. The third batch was excellent from the beginning, to the point we didn’t manage to hold onto any long enough to see how it aged. Each time I tweeked the recipe a bit. This fourth batch has the addition of a half pound of Peet’s Major Dickason’s Blend espresso beans (minimally ground at a #13) that was roasted just this week and added to the carboy before racking the brew for secondary in order to cold extract the coffee flavors.

As it currently stands the recipe comprises:

  • 1c. Ghirardelli Natural Unsweetened Cocoa powder
  • grains:
    • 0.5lbs rolled oats
    • 1lb chocolate
    • 1.5lbs roast barley
    • 0.5lbs 80L crystal
  • 7lbs amber malt extract
  • hops:
    • 2oz fuggles (60minutes)
    • 1oz goldings (20minutes)
  • White Labs liquid London Ale Yeast or better Dry English Yeast…or even better is to swing by HUB during their Friday afternoon dock sale for a bottle of their amazing fruity yeast (supposed to be the same as used in Young’s ales)

The house has an amazing aroma of fruity yeast and dark espresso.

Spring beer brewing finally done

Saturday, April 25th, 2009
99 bottles of beer on the wall

99 bottles of beer on the wall

We bottle the chocolate stout last night and racked the bitter over into a keg. Both sampled quite well. My benchmark tends to be if room temperature and flat tastes good then cold and carbonated will also. And both of these are quite yum. From this sample I’m inclined to think the chocolate stout might just be our best beer ever.

Oh and if you happen to be such a nerd to look at image exif data you’ll spot that I’ve got the new camera! Will post more later on that as I get some experience with it. So far I’m loving it.

Some vines for the back fence

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
Kiwi

Kiwi

Today I took a break from work and planted the hops. I still need to rig up something for it to climb on, but in the meantime it is in the ground and will hopefully take. It’ll be really interesting to see if we get hops production this year.

I also decided to train some kiwi (a male and female “Hayward fuzzy”) on the back fence.

And I was happy to see the asparagus is actually sprouting!

Hops rhizomes

Sunday, April 12th, 2009
Hops rhizomes

Hops rhizomes

Some time back Madi carpooled with her school/soccer friend Amy and when she was dropped off we ended up chatting homebrewing with Amy’s mom and she mentioned they grew hops. This morning the two of them were texting and it reminded me I’d been meaning to inquire about getting some hops rhizomes since spring planting time’s come around. I wasn’t thinking we’d do it on Easter day, but they said come on over today. So Madi got to see a friend and I got to grill the parents on hops growing (and raising chickens) and got a tonne of rhizomes for Cascade, Willamette and Nugget varieties.

I know I’ve seen hops growing in massive agricultural production, but I underestimated it’s backyard growing ability. The Krager’s had 16foot 4×4’s in the ground supporting wire, up to which the hops is trained. I could use a slightly bigger yard to have the space to do that and not be shading my garden. But I’ll try to get creative in the meantime and can always transplant rhizomes elsewhere someday if the opportunity presents.

Spring Beers

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

2009 spring beers fermenting

2009 spring beers fermenting



We’ve got 20gallons of beer fermenting at the moment. There’s a Czech style lager cooling in the crawlspace in its long secondary fermentation, which will end any week now. And in the image, from left to right, is our Scotch Ale, this years (the 3rd) attempt at finding the perfect Chocolate Stout for our tastes, and what will hopefully be a simple light easy drinking sunny weather beer in the form of a classic English Bitter.

Zwickelmania

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

I learned a new word in German yesterday…”Zwickel”. Apparently that’s a spigot, in particular on the bottom of a brewing cask used for sampling beer.
The local wineries have twice yearly open houses that seem to draw crowds well. On Saturday Oregon’s breweries gave it a go under the “Zwickelmania” banner. It sounds like turn out was good, so here’s hoping they do it again.
We “only” went to HUB. One of their brewmasters gave us a tour and a few samples of their exquisitely crafted beers. It was amazing to see the “air locks” (bucket with a plastic hose blowing off the top of the fermenter) on their massive fermenters blasting away. That many gallons of wort sure kick out a lot of CO2. Makes ours look absolutely puny.
Among the various interesting things we learned about HUB is that they (the brewers) have an open door policy Friday evenings, they welcome homebrewers and the curious to stop by for a chat, and even sell barley and yeast! And they use Young’s yeast for some things…I’ve got to try getting some of that for our next batch of chocolate stout.