No longer sweet wort or a bubbling beer in the works, the hazy NEIPA is now officially a 6.8% ABV flat beer. After some bio-transformation hopping and some dry hopping, I racked the NEIPA into a keg. Looking forward to the first taste once it has some bubbles.
Category Archives: Brewing
Hazy NEIPA on the horizon
There must be some technical glitch on the site because it looks like I haven’t made a beer in two years. I think I missed one completely but in the past two years I’ve spent more time on the road than at home and brewing has taken a back burner. Fortunately I haven’t gone two years without drinking beer…
Back in the fight, I decided to take a crack at my current favorite variety. A juicy, hoppy, New England IPA. Roll your eyes all you beer snobs and complain that juicy is an incomplete adjective. I dusted off the equipment, cracked a cold one (the chef can’t die of thirst), and 10 oz of hops later (most late additions) we have something in the works.
Cream Ale is in the keg
Phew! Just in time. Out of secondary and into the keg she goes.
Hopefully by the next time I’m back in town, this stuff will be cold and ready to drink!
Cream Ale in the works
In an attempt to take advantage of a break in the action (my busy schedule), I made a leap and whipped up a version of an American Lager mixed with a Cream Ale. Hopefully I’ll be around to keg it and enjoy it…
-
- Cream Ale grain
-
- Last bit of Saaz for the drop hop
-
- Kettle hard at work
The goal was something outside the standard beer types sitting around the house. Something light. Something cold. And something that could be enjoyed (en masse) on a hot summer day.
Black gold is in the keg
The stout finished up (totally unrelated to our planned holiday travels) today and was jammed into a keg. Instead of force carbing it this time around I opted to prime the keg. I’ve done a few of each now and I think I like the results of the latter method.
The final concoction has two-row, chocolate, Munich, Crystal 60L, black, and oats…. and HONEY! Think of it like a black liquid honey oatmeal raisin cookie without the raisins. Or maybe like Honey Nut Cheerios without the nuts and milk. Here’s the the first pour in the new year!
Double, double.
Diplopia. Look it up kids. While you’re at it look up Foreigner.
This stout will be my first crack at secondary fermentation. Since no bad experiment holds all variables constant, I made sure to dry hop the secondary as well. What the heck right?
-
- Dry hopping cascade
I smashed my test tube by accident (not beer related actually) so who knows what the alcohol actually will be. If all goes according to plan this stout should be too dark and too much alcohol to be a stout but that’s the point. Whirly Bird was hoping to drop off something that would warm the soul on a cold winter day.
A stout is on the horizon
Look! In the distance… I can see something… something dark and stormy lookin’
-
- Whole Chinook
-
- Stout Boil
No better way to ring in the Thanksgiving holiday with a bunch of ho-made (wink) pretzels, some beer cheese dip, a glass of Novemberfest, and another 5 gallons of the good stuff. In these busy, tumultuous times remember beer is not the answer. Beer? is the question and the answer is “yes.”
Novemberfest is (quickly) in the keg
Rather than grabbing another ice cold 1.004 FG beer, I opted to pull the plug when the FG hit 1.011. A point low of the style guide but whatever. It’s beer first, a märzen second. Into the keg it goes. A few weeks keg conditioning, a few weeks cooling and carbonating, and she’ll be ready for consumption a full month late.
Novemberfest: the newest of holidays
Happy Oktoberfest Novemberfest! It’s what you celebrate when you miss the required beer birthday (or conception day?) for an Oktoberfest. Grind, mash, boil, hop, cool, and ferment. It’s that easy right? Pilsner, Vienna, Munich, Aromatic, Crystal 20/40, and CaraPils were crushed and put to work with Tett. Old Safale Number 04 is working to make sugar into alcohol as I write this.
-
- Novemberfest Grains
-
- Tettnanger
-
- Novemberfest: Mash
Prost! …in about 6 weeks.
Liquid Citra is in the keg
Hopefully this one will beat the farmhouse out of the tap as it should require a bit less time to rest. I was surprised to read a FG of 1.004 on the hydrometer before I poured the beer into the keg. Not sure if the WLP-001 did something it shouldn’t have or if the hydrometer is busted. I guess I’ll brew some more and find out.