Coconut Porter Dry Coconutting And Sample Tasting

I'm making a coconut porter. The base is a porter I've brewed several times now. I actually have the recipe locked and after 5 years of brewing it's only the third recipe I consider unchangeable. It's perfect for adjuncts because it's not too roasty or hoppy. It's english style, slightly chocolaty with very low esters so it's an easy drinker. I most recently used it for a vanilla porter and that turned out fantastic.

I've read several articles on the best way to add coconut to beer. I've also tasted a few samples and there seems to be a couple ways to make the flavor really stand out. One is to use a shit-ton of coconut, like 2lbs/gallon. That seems extreme. Another I gathered from tasting and that's to use a tincture or spirits barrel aging to enhance the flavor. The best coconut beer I ever had was aged in a rum barrel. I had that side by side with the version not aged it the barrel and it was like night and day.

Some people said to lace it through the entire brewing process (mash, boil, secondary), others say to roast the coconut and still others say to use sweetened coconut. With all this advice there's only one way to find out what really works and that's through trial and error. Here is what I did and some partial results. I'll be sure to post final tasting notes on this beer.

I brewed my porter per my normal process and added 1lb of unsweetened organic finely shredded coconut at knock out. After 1 week of fermentation I roasted 3 lbs of coconut in the oven at 300F making sure to turn it frequently (about every 4-5 minutes) to make sure it wouldn't burn. I stuffed all of that into a sanitized hop bag (I don't think it would filter out well).

Before adding the dry roasted coconut into the completely fermented porter I drew a sample to see how the 1 lb at knock out affected the beer. Unfortunately it didn't seem to add any coconut to the beer. The sample tastes exactly how I remember this beer tasting after fermentation and before carbonation. Slightly chocolatey very smooth and delicious but no coconut. Next time I do this I'll triple the coconut at knock out, hopefully the dry roasted coconutting will add some of the flavor I'm looking for. It it's not to my satisfaction I have another 4 lbs of coconut and I'll continue with a second dry coconutting.

Simplifying Homebrewing - Grains

I recently purchased 12 - 1 gallon PET storage containers to hold my adjuncts and grains. I live quite a distance from the nearest homebrew supply store and since I'm not very good about planning my brew days I keep quite a few grains on hand. I thought 12 containers would be enough to hold the various bags of grain in my storage locker but I was just plain wrong. So now I'm going to attempt to outline what 12 grains I should have on hand that will allow me to brew the most variety of beers. I could just buy more containers but since I'm trying to be more budget conscious, and I have a limited amount of space I thought I would try this route.

Frequently Brewed Beers

I should probably start with a list of beers I know I brew repeatedly. That will help pick some of the grains to keep on hand.

1. Panhead Supercharger Clone - About 2-4x/year.
2. IPA 2x/year
3. Hefe 2x/year
4. Saison - 2x/year in the summer
5. Brown Ale - 2-3x/year
6. Porter - 2-3x/year
7. Stout - 1-2x/year (Includes RIS)
8. Barley Wine 1x/year
9. Winter Warmer 1x/year
10. Belgian Dark Strong 1x/year
11. Munich Dunkel 1x/year
12. Doppelbock 1x/year
13. Sours 4x/year (Includes Kettle Soured)

Base Malt

I keep a 50lb bag of Briess 2-Row for my base malt but have found recently that I'm brewing a lot of English beers and I keep buying 10lb bags of Marris Otter. I'm contemplating a complete change to Marris Otter but it's going to mess with my brewing budget. 2-Row is $50, I think Marris Otter is more like $65 a bag.

Crystal Malts

I'm a huge fan of cherry and dark fruit flavors in my beers so I definately want Special B, British 135/165 and C120. The supercharger clone used c20 and honey malt so those are a must.

1. Crystal 20
2. Crystal 40 - Layering in Brown and amber ales
3. Crystal 80 - Layering
4. Crystal 120
5. Crystal (british) 135/165
6. Belgian Special B

Well there's half the containers just in crystal malts. After black malts there won't be much left. I could cut out the crystal 40 if I find I'm frequently missing something else but I think I can make this work.

Black Malts

My porter uses carafa II or midnight wheat, I like the wheat better. The stouts use chocolate and roast malt. If I include a black patent type malt I'm screwed for much else. I need a flaked barley for quite a few of these darker beers, especially if I ferment with a highly attenuative yeast it sort of rounds the beer out, so I'll leave off the black patent for now.

1. Midnight Wheat or Carafa Special
2. Chocolate Malt
3. Roasted Barley

Other Malts

My stouts and porters also call for either flaked oats or flaked barley for some creaminess. If I have to choose just one I'll go with flaked barley, I think it adds a little more body with the creamy mouth feel.

1. Honey Malt
2. Flaked Barley
3. Biscuit/Victory

Biscuit malt is good for layering in several types of beer. The munich dunkel, browns, porters and stouts all benefit from some biscuit malt. 

I left out wheat malt which I use quite frequently between the wheat beers and sours but those are beers I usually plan out a bit. They are seasonal like the Barleywine, BDS, Winter Warmer and Doppelbock.

I'm sure this list will change over time as my brewing tastes change, or I realize I missed something I use quite frequently.

Homebrewing Obsession

As with many people in this hobby homebrewing has become an obsession for me. When I'm not actually brewing I'm planning my next brew, shopping for ingredients, developing recipes, reading every book I can get my hands on, reading every blog I can find, and watching every video; even the corny tasting vids, or what I'm up to vids.

I had a long weekend this past weekend and I ended up brewing twice. That doesn't seem like a big deal but when you consider I started by brewing about 4x a year followed up by maybe every six weeks then once a month, twice a month until I'm pretty much brewing once every weekend now. I don't know why I do this, I end up giving a lot of beer away plus it's increased my own drinking quite a bit.

I mostly do it because I'm still experimenting. I'm still trying to find the magical hop combinations, get that 50 point stout or Belgian dark strong, and figure out what's working for a specific style of beer. I believed this is taking so long for me because I'm all over the place. I'm not brewing a single style until I nail it, I don't like drinking the same beer all the time so I'm always changing what I'm brewing. I don't see anything particularly wrong with that, in fact I think it's keeping me interested in this hobby.

This is not the first time I've brewed more than once on a weekend but this time had me thinking I either need another hobby or to create more projects around the house. The second brew day was on Sunday and I was just killing time until football started at 1PM. I had already made breakfast and cut/sauted vegetables and meat for a stew. That done I wondered what I was going to do until the Bills game, impromptu brew day!

My previous hobby (computers) was a complete obsession as well, so much so that it turned into college and my day job. That worked out pretty well for me and actually kept me so busy for years that I didn't need another hobby. Well that, owning/maintaining a home, and raising a child with my wife. Of course as with anything I got better and better at it until it wasn't occupying as much of my time and then came homebrewing :).

As I said above none of this is a problem until you realize how much money you're spending on the hobby. You always "need" some new piece of equipment or to replace one you've outgrown/broken. When you brew every week you spend a lot of money on ingredients and a lot of time brewing. I didn't realize just how much I was spending until put myself on a brewing budget. It's been about two months now and even with the fairly large $200/month limit I placed on myself I'm having a hard time keeping to it. I blew my entire November budget after planning through all of October for what I would need. I had bugs in one of my bags of grain so I "needed" new storage jars for the grains I keep in stock (my LHBS is 50 minutes away). I ordered 12 PET 1 gallon storage jars and with shipping those were $60. A bag to 2-Row was $50+tax. The rest was spent on grains for stouts and porters, yeast and hops, and it went quickly. Well I broke my last hydrometer while cleaning on my first brewday this weekend so I went without for the second brew and I'll continue to go without until my December budget. Not the worst thing, I know my system and my numbers are usually pretty close to estimated plus I have the Tilt which is spot on for the OG and usually only a point or two off on the FG.

So I looked back at my homebrew spending in the months prior to starting the budget and it was absolutely ridiculous. Anywhere from $200 to $600, in a month!!!! This year I built a new mash tun, bought a Hydra immersion chiller, 3 hydrometers, 2 new perlick faucets, new gas and beer lines, a 20lb co2 tank, 2 gauge pressure regulator, 5 new fermentation buckets, 5 homebrew books, 2 magazine subscriptions, went to HomebrewCon in Baltimore ($1500) and bought  several items for my homebrew club. I know I've missed some things too. I think this qualifies as obsessed spending.

To top all of this craziness off I write in this blog once or twice a week just because homebrewing is always on my mind. There's not too many reading this blog, if any, but I keep writing because it's a way to think about and review my homebrewing.

I remember I used to love reading for fun, it may be time to recapture the love of an old hobby that doesn't have me spending money as fast as I make it.

Big Beautiful Barleywine

I brewed my first Barleywine a couple weeks ago. I love the style, it's a great beer to sip on in the middle of winter. I didn't have the sense to take a bunch of pictures but I do have a shot of my 17.5 gallon mash tun filled for a partigyle brew from the Barleywine mash :). The Barleywine mash itself was at the very top.

Since this was my first attempt at a Barleywine I purchased a great resource on the subject that never made it to me by brew day :(. 

I ordered this book along with some canning jars which broke during shipping so Fedex sent it back to the sender and I had to rely on my usual resources for brewing a new style. The BJCP guidelines, AHA recipes section, and microbreweries that list ingredients for their beers (I love the breweries that do this! Thank you Smuttynose, Ommegang, Avery etc...)

I chose to brew an English version of Barleywine, I like the complex malty and estery/fruity profile of this version without the added layers of hopping. I plan on aging the majority and enjoying it over the next few years to see how it evolves, according to the book above I made the right choice as the less hoppy English versions tend to age better.

Here is the recipe:

Overview

Name	Category	Brewer	OG	FG	ABV	SRM	IBU
Untested: English Barley Wine	English Barleywine	FerventBrewer	1.102	1.032	9.3 %	18.0 SRM	50.5 IBUs

Fermentables

Amount	Name	Diastatic Power	Color	Notes
16 lbs	Brewers Malt 2-Row (Briess)	140.0000000	1.8 SRM	Flavor:Mild Malty Smoother, less grainy flavor than 6-row
4 lbs	Munich Malt, Germany (Avangard)	72.0000000	9.5 SRM	A malt with enough diastatic power to convert itself but often used in conjunction with other base malts to contribute maltiness and an orange color.
4 lbs	Vienna Malt (Gambrinus)	90.0000000	6.0 SRM	Higher kilning temperatures give this Vienna malt its deep golden color and strong malt flavor.
8.0 oz	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L	0.0000000	40.0 SRM	Adds body, color and improves head retention. Also called "Crystal" malt.
8.0 oz	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L	0.0000000	80.0 SRM	Adds body, color and improves head retention. Also called "Crystal" malt.
8.0 oz	Crystal 150, 2-Row, (Great Western)	0.0000000	150.0 SRM	Crystal 150 (145-155°L) Similar to the C120, but with a much more intense flavor and color. May get a hint of the burnt character.

Hops

Amount	Name	Alpha Acids	Time	Notes
0.75 oz	Warrior	15.0000000	60.0 min	High alpha hops from Yakima Chief Ranches. Also called YCR-5. Mild aroma and low cohumulone content - primarily for bittering. Used for: Ales, stouts Aroma: Neutral, clean, mild Substitutes: Nugget, Columbus, Magnum
1.00 oz	Fuggle	4.5000000	20.0 min	Traditional English-type aroma hop. Used for: English Ales, ESB, Bitter, Lagers Aroma: Mild, soft, fruity, spicy, woody Substitute: Fuggle (U.S.), Willamette, Styrian Golding Storage: Good/Very Good (70-80% AA after 6 months at 20 C) 3-5.6% AA 2-3% Beta
1.00 oz	Chinook	13.0000000	10.0 min	Strong versatile bittering hop Used for: Ales, porters, stouts Aroma: Heavy and spicy aroma Substitutes: Galena, Eroica, Nugget, Bullion Examples: Sierra Nevada Stout, Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale
1.00 oz	Fuggle	4.5000000	10.0 min	Traditional English-type aroma hop. Used for: English Ales, ESB, Bitter, Lagers Aroma: Mild, soft, fruity, spicy, woody Substitute: Fuggle (U.S.), Willamette, Styrian Golding Storage: Good/Very Good (70-80% AA after 6 months at 20 C) 3-5.6% AA 2-3% Beta
1.00 oz	Mt. Hood	6.0000000	2.0 min	Used for: European Lagers, finishing Aroma: Mild with a clean aroma, neutral flavor. Somewhat pungent. Substitutes: Hallertauer, Liberty, Crystal

Yeast

Amount	Name	Attenuation	Notes
35.49 ml	English Ale	66.5000000	Classic ESB strain best for English style milds, bitters, porters and English style stouts. Leaves a clear beer with some residual sweetness.

Mash Steps

Amount	Type	Name	Ratio	Temp	Time	Description
8.47 gal	Infusion	Mash In	1.250 qt/lb	66.6666667	45.0000000	Add 8.47 gal of water at 171.2 F

I did take a couple liberties here. I used 2-Row with a mix of munich and vienna to emulate a more complex base malt like marris otter. This choice was one of convenience, I had munich and vienna and no marris otter. The other was using chinook, I had 1oz left from my harvest this year and the bag had come unsealed so I wanted to use it up. They smelled amazing so I backed off my bittering addition and added some chinook toward the end of the boil.

Brew day was pretty easy and I only added about an hour to the end of my normal brew day for the partigyle, it's nice having some extra equipment laying around.

I bottled it last weekend before reading (or even receiving) Barley Wine. My plan was to bottle condition for 90+ days, the book suggests a 90 day conditioning in secondary then another 90 days of bottle conditioning before release. Since I already fucked that up I go with my original plan as follows.

• 2 weeks - Taste a bottle after carbonation
• Taste 1 bottle every month until I'm happy with the results
• Save 5 bottles marked with a year to taste 1 each year for the next 5 years alongside new batches brewed every year
• Give a few bottles as gifts and drink the rest as the mood strikes me

Because I want this to become an annual brew along with my Belgian Dark Strong I started designing a label to have some grogtags made up. What do you think?

I'll try to post some tasting notes somewhere around the 90 day mark then 180 to see how much of a difference it makes.

Fred Eckart Predicts AB inBev's Current Takeover Strategy

In  episode 20 of BrewingTV Fred Eckardt predicts what AB inBev is currently doing to craft beer. Essentially buying it up in order to stay relevant. Have a look starting at 15:45 and ending at 16:45, it's uncanny how on the head he hit that nail. I think 2011 is when AB inBev purchased its first craft brewery that I'm aware of, Goose Island, so this is near a completely uninformed guess as it was published in October of 2010.

Yeast Banking - First Slant

I don't think I wrote about making my slants but I created them when I was canning some extra wort for starters. I wrote about that in this post http://blog.ferventbrewer.com/2016/10/canning-wort-for-starters.html. I simply used the methods taught in this blog post https://suigenerisbrewing.blogspot.com/2015/11/easy-home-yeast-banking-and-video.html?showComment=1476448076312#c8864034177591573235 from Sui Generis, it's a much better resource than I could ever be on the subject.

I did have to wait three days to get this much colonization from streaking. There were a couple small colonies after two days but then boom, full slant on day three.

So the next step was to safely (working around my alcohol lamp and flaming lips) poor my sanitized mineral oil into the slant on top of my colonies to preserve them for up to 3 years! With that done I placed them in my refrigerator for safe keeping!

This process does not take much time or effort to accomplish. I may have added 10 minutes to my last brew day to collect and sterilize my wort, slants and mineral oil and to create my agar slants. I now have enough slants to keep 8 different yeast banked which will save me some real money and trips to the brew store over the next couple of years.

AHA Hidden Corner of Awesomeness

I've been an AHA member  for about 2 years now. I frequent the site and love the access to Zymurgy online, beer trivia, and especially the winner's recipe database.

Well today I found a little gem that makes my membership well worth it. There's a Research and Education Fund section under Community that offers funds to homebrew clubs or individuals who wish to participate in an experiment. The results get posted for completed projects and are available to all AHA members! That's very cool!

If you're an AHA member be sure to check it out (you need to sign in first!) at https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/community/research-and-education-fund/completed-proposals/

Canning Wort For Starters

I'm sure this is a subject blogged/vlogged about multiple times but since this was my first experience with the process I'll just write a bit about it.

I had a planned brewed day last Friday, I was going to brew a Barleywine. This changed because I wanted to get some wort canned and I wanted to get another use out the WLP002 before kicking the shit out of it with a Barleywine.

Anyway I wanted this to be an easy drinker with an O.G. of 1.045 so I could also harvest some wort for future starters. This is what I did.

1. Adjust the recipe to make an extra gallon for canning. Beersmith made this a snap, I just scaled the existing recipe then reset my hop additions to what they were originally (we're going to be removing the extra gallon before hopping begins).
2. Mash and batch sparge as usual then start the boil.
3. Once the wort had boiled about 10 minutes and before adding any hops I filled each jar using the jar clamp canning accessory tool I purchase with my pressure cooker. Since I was using a pressure cooker to can rather than a liquid bath I didn't need to pre-sanitize my jars, everything would be killed in the cooker.
4. I placed a lid on each jar and lightly screwed the ring down. This allows the jars to vent before eventually sealing on cool down. 
5. I pressure cooked at 15psi for 20 minutes then allowed the cooker to cool for 1.5 hours before removing the lid and testing each jar for a seal. I had one that didn't seal and I think it's because it fell over against the side of the cooker and knocked the lid slightly off. I had a different size jars in the cooker plus my slants so I'm not surprised they moved around a bit.

Anyways this was a very simple process and didn't add any time to my brew day and I now have 3 1L starters worth of wort ready to go . It always killed me to pay $15 for 3lbs of DME, You might get 5 1L starters from that much DME. It might cost me $3 in extra grain to get the same thing from wort, that's pretty good savings over time.

Yeast Banking 1 - Supplies

I've been following Sui Generis's blog for a while now. He's definately an authority on yeast and yeast handling and he's very good at explaining things so even I can understand them :)

He has a nice video on yeast banking with slants which according to him is simple and will keep yeast usable for up to 3 years. http://suigenerisbrewing.blogspot.com/2015/11/easy-home-yeast-banking-and-video.html

So I went out and bought the supplies I would need to start banking my own yeast. I'm very tired of paying $9 or $10 for liquid yeast cultures every time I want to brew. I wrote about his in my Brewing Budget post. I spent about $130 on all the supplies because I didn't own a pressure cooker which is required to really sanitize the agar, mineral oil and starter wort. The pressure cooker was $60 so the rest cost about $70 to get started. That includes that nice stainless slant rack ($17) which I thought I needed to hold the slants ($19 for 25) while in the pressure cooker.

If I had owned a pressure cooker I could recoup the cost in less than 8 brews but it's going to be more like 14. That's about 5 months worth of brewing for me so the return on investment is a ways out. The nice thing is that pressure cooker is a canner and steamer so I can use it can some wort for starters when I brew and save on DME as well. That will go a long ways in cost savings and convenience I think.

If you're interested in banking your own yeast I highly recommend checking out this blog http://suigenerisbrewing.blogspot.com/. There are several videos on streaking, making agar and yeast wrangling.

Modern English Porter (Vanilla) - Tasting Notes

This is the beer I pitched onto of my brown ale yeast cake that fermented in 1 day. I wrote about that here. I kegged and fined with gelatin 4 days after brew day then added 2 vanilla beans for 36 hours tasting it along the way. After only 2 hours I could taste vanilla in the 5 gallon batch. At 18 hours it was probably enough pull the beans but I let it go a bit more just to make it a little more prominent. Then I forgot to pull the beans out the next morning and so we hit the 36 hour mark last night. I was worried but I needn't have been. This beer is so smooth and the vanilla is not overpowering in the least. It's just adding some complexity to a pretty good base beer.

Appearance - Nice black color except around the edges where it's more brown. Not out of place for a porter. The head is a fluffy tan color. It has decent staying power but eventually the oils from the beans do wipe it out.

Aroma - You can smell the vanilla, other than that I don't get much on the nose of this beer.

Mouthfeel - Better than I expected. Because of the overpitch the F.G. was much lower than predicted at 1.010. I would have expected a thin, dry beer but it's not. There's some body and slickness like you would get from an oatmeal stout. This might be from the flaked barley in the recipe or maybe the vanilla beans but I think that was there pre-dry-beaning.

Taste - Vanilla for sure. Not sharp alcohol vanilla like you get from some cheap extracts or faked vanillas but a smooth fresh and tasty vanilla. There's absolutely no roast in here. In fact if there wasn't any vanilla in this beer it would be pretty plane. Some chocolate but not much at all.

Future Changes - Some roast would add character to this beer, but not too much. This would be a good beer to introduce people to dark beers with because there's nothing in your face or over the top. A very good base to allow adjuncts to shine like chocolate, coffee or vanilla.

Fruiting A Sour

I don't have much experience with fruiting my sour beers. The only one I have fruited was a 1 gallon test batch with blueberries where I used 1lb/gal. That was enough to get great color but very little flavor.

I have a batch of golden sour in a 10 gallon barrel that had reached 1.000 but was only very lightly tart. I wanted a little more out of the beer so I decided to fruit it. This will give it a little more sugar to keep fermenting and hopefully some nice fruit character as well.

I decided to use what was on sale this time of year and that happened to be nectarines and plums at my local grocery store. I purchased enough to use 2lb/gal. Obviously I'm splitting the 10 gallon batch into two 5 gallons batches, one for each fruit.

I set the fruit out on my table for a week to ripen. I tasted each fruit and neither were so delicious I couldn't stay out of them, so it may be a mistake using them, but I already bought 20 lbs of fruit so onward we go.

It's been about a month since I cut up the fruit and siphoned the beer on top of them. There's been very little fermentation activity. The fruit is floating and any parts exposed to air are rotting. I swirl the carboys to cover them in acidic beer, I don't know if this is helping or not. Hopefully it keeps the fruit from molding and I don't lose 10 gallons of beer :(

I thought a pellicle was forming but it turned out to be slight fermentation activity, hopefully were gaining a little more tartness.

The beer has quite a bit of fruit pectin haze now where it was perfectly clear when I first fruited it so I think the fruit is breaking down. Another month and I should be able to cold crash and bottle. Waiting is the hardest part!

Wet Hop Cascadian Dark Ale - Tasting Notes

A few weeks ago I wrote about my back yard hop harvest and my Wet Hop Cascadian Dark Ale, I think it's time for tasting notes.

Appearance - I know the photo make it look like this beer actually turned out black but it didn't. It's more of a muddy brown verging on black which is a disappointment. I changed the recipe to use carafa II rather than roasted barley and now I regret it, it was really good the first time around. The head pours large and creamy, too much for the style.

Aroma - The citra dry hopping comes through big time in this beer as it should because I used 3.5 ounces. There's also a chocolate/coffee aroma in the background.

Mouthfeel - There is way more body in this beer than expected for a 1.010 FG. It's very creamy feeling in your mouth and gives the impression of a root beer float. Not exactly what I was looking for. Likely due to 16% rye malt.

Taste - There is a slight chocolate flavor and some coffee notes that aren't especially roasty just give the impression of dark grains. There's also a beautiful layering of citrus that doesn't clash as much as you might think it would. Very very little bittering, no surprise since this was 100% whirlpool hopped. The taste has changed significantly since I kegged it. The flavors have mingle together well and I'm really starting to enjoy this beer regardless of its faults.

Future Changes - Try midnight wheat for coloring next time and bump up the target SRM from 31 to 37. I'll need much less midnight wheat to make the beer black and this might help with some of the short comings. Reduce the rye malt by half to take some of the body and head creaminess away. Dry hop with centennial and cascade rather than citra, it's just too much.

Blog Roll Issues

This is not a brewing related post, this will be rant about losing my blogroll for some unknown reason. I'm not sure how much others rely on their blog rolls but I love having mine. It allows me to quickly see who's blog has new content and I run down that list several times a week.

It also helps me keep track all the various blogs I like to read, about 20 of them just for brewing. I know I won't be able to recreate the entire list if blogger can't bring it back and I'm seriously riled up about that.



It's like losing the Google RSS reader and the start page all over again. I checked and I'm not the only blogger user who is suddenly missing their blogroll. It looks like they changed the name of the gadget from Blog Roll to Blog List.

I have sent feedback about this although I'm not expecting a response. If I was a more serious blogger I would consider switching hosts, as it is I'm just playing so I can spend more time thinking about my hobby.

Sigh.

Fuck!

Brewing Budget

So I'm putting myself on a brewing budget. I spend a lot of money on this hobby and that should change a little. The budget is going to be fairly large, about $200/month but it will be for ingredients, equipment and craft beer purchases. I will allow carry over from one month to the next but no robbing peter to pay paul. In other words I can't borrow from a future month to buy that Tower of Power. I have to be conservative until I have all the money. Tougher than it sounds considering I buy pils and munich in bulk bags, that's about $120 in one shot and lasts about 2 months.

I plan to stretch the budget by being better at harvesting yeast for the future. I'm going to pick 5 strains that I'll attempt to keep in a healthy state. That also seems like a lot but I want to brew US, British and Belgian ales plus lagers and sours. I'd say 5 strains is a minimum. The 5th will be a mixed culture and I'll pull dregs from bottles for that.

Yeast is about 10-25% of the cost of a homebrew if you purchase a new pitch so this could take me a long way. I haven't proven to be very good about using the yeast I've harvested because I'm always brewing a different style of beer but I plan to pull wort from each beer I make and rotate the yeast in starters just to keep them healthy. Then if I don't use them for a while I know they aren't a bunch of dead cells. I won't be streaking because I don't have the equipment and that would be a pretty large initial investment, especially for the microscope.

My other thought is to plan my next 6 brews ahead of time. Then I know what ingredients and equipment I'll need and can find the best deal. For example I sometimes buy my ingredients on morebeer.com and make sure to spend enough to get free shipping. I often find myself forgetting one ingredient then having to run the LHBS where I inevitably spend even more money. This will also allow me to plan for bottle purchases for beers like Barleywine, RIS and Old Ales. Not much point of having these beers hold up a keg for months on end. I usually buy my bottles with craft beer already in them so they may be costly :).

Next 6 Homebrews

- British Barleywine (An effort to utilize that WLP002 yeast cake from the brown ale and porter)
- Winter Warmer (Smutty Nose Style - no spices)
- American Pale Ale (Supercharger Clone) - Will need to buy RO water
- Kettle Sour w/Brett
- XMAS Amber Lager (I have an amber lager all grain kit that was cheap I want to use up) May need to buy spices
- Dunkelbock

Bonus: Porter - rebrew the porter I just made.

Not too many sessionable beers in there, it's looking like I'll be ready for a cold winter.

Modern English Porter 13C - Smoked Pork Back Ribs

Last weekend I brewed a British Brown Ale using White Labs WLP002 yeast. Since the price of yeast is so damn high anymore (my LHBS is selling white labs for $9 and wyeast for $10, geesh) I try to get as many uses as possible out of it. Normally I would make a starter and scavenge some yeast form the starter before pitching but last weekend's brew day was impromptu, the yeast was only a month old and the brown ale had a low enough gravity for a direct pitch. So I decided to line up my next few brews for dumping on the brown ale's yeast cake.

So this weekend was 5 gallons of an English Porter (why in hell the BJCP switches from British to English in these styles is beyond me) and next weekend will be a stout then a barley wine. I may skip the stout, we'll see. I've brewed this porter before and it turned out exceptionally well.

Most the brew day went pretty smoothly except for one little thing. The recipe calls for 3/4 lb of chocolate malt and I didn't have any plus my LHBS is 40 miles away, blah. So I had to adjust the recipe on the fly. I ended up substituting 1/2 lb pale chocolate and 1/2 lbs midnight wheat for the chocolate malt. It bumped the SRM up a few points but I'm okay with that, I just didn't want to add any strong roast flavors to this beer. We will see how it turns out, to bad I don't have any of the last batch for comparison but I drink the beer I make, I don't tend to let it sit around for long :).

Since I racked on top of the entire yeast cake from the brown ale a very fast and vigorous ferment started within a couple hours. This is the data from just 18 hours of fermentation.

Beer Overview
Brew Date	9/25/2016
Beer	Nakota Porter 2016
OG	1.065	Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 1:29:38 PM
SG/FG	1.013	Monday, September 26, 2016 at 9:14:38 AM
Current ABV	6.83%
Highest Ferm Temp	73° F
Average Ferm Temp	69.9° F
Lowest Ferm Temp	64.2° F
Days to Ferment	0.80

You can see the beer started at 64F, the fermentation room was a steady 67F and the beer rose to 73F just from vigorous fermentation. That's a lot of happy yeast partying it up for less than a day to almost completely ferment this beer in 18 hours. I'm not sure if the excess yeast will keep esters down or the added fermentation temperature will drive them up but I'm excited to find out. The estimated FG was 1.024 which has already been blown by. I didn't expect the large pitch to make the yeast more attenuative but it seems to have done just that. Hopefully there will still be a little body left in the beer, I dislike dry, thin or watery porters and stouts. This may be a lesson learned, I did consider removing a significant amount of the yeast cake before pitching but decided against it. I may regret that decision.

The Recipe:

Overview

Name	Category	Brewer	OG	FG	ABV	SRM	IBU
Keeper: Nokota Porter	American Porter	Wilby	1.064	1.021	5.7 %	36.9 SRM	35.1 IBUs

Fermentables

Amount	Name	Diastatic Power	Color	Notes
9 lbs	Brewers Malt 2-Row (Briess)	140.0000000	1.8 SRM	Flavor:Mild Malty Smoother, less grainy flavor than 6-row
1 lbs	Barley, Flaked (Briess)	0.0000000	1.7 SRM	Use at 10-25% to produce a light colored, mild flavored, dry beer.
1 lbs	Brown Malt	0.0000000	65.0 SRM	Imparts a dry, biscuit flavor. Used in nut brown ales, porters and some Belgian ales.
1 lbs	Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L	0.0000000	120.0 SRM	Adds body, color and improves head retention. Also called "Crystal" malt. Very Dark
12.0 oz	Victory Malt	50.0000000	25.0 SRM	Toasted malt that adds a "Biscuit" or toasted flavor to English ales. Use for: Nut brown ales, porters
8.0 oz	Chocolate Wheat Malt	0.0000000	400.0 SRM	Intensifies aroma and color in top-fermented beers such as dark wheat beers.
8.0 oz	Pale Chocolate Malt	0.0000000	300.0 SRM	Dark malt that gives a rich red or brown color and nutty flavor. Use for: Brown ales, porters, some stouts Maintains some malty flavor, not as dark as roasted malt.
8.0 oz	Special B (Dingemans)	0.0000000	147.5 SRM

Hops

Amount	Name	Alpha Acids	Time	Notes
1.50 oz	Mt. Hood	6.0000000	60.0 min	Used for: European Lagers, finishing Aroma: Mild with a clean aroma, neutral flavor. Somewhat pungent. Substitutes: Hallertauer, Liberty, Crystal
1.50 oz	Mt. Hood	6.0000000	5.0 min	Used for: European Lagers, finishing Aroma: Mild with a clean aroma, neutral flavor. Somewhat pungent. Substitutes: Hallertauer, Liberty, Crystal

Yeast

Amount	Name	Attenuation	Notes
35.49 ml	English Ale WLP002	70.0000000

Mash Steps

Amount	Type	Name	Ratio	Temp	Time	Description
4.70 gal	Infusion	Mash In	1.250 qt/lb	68.8888889	45.0000000	Add 4.70 gal of water at 167.6 F

Notes

Ver 1.1 - Changed batch size to 5.5 gallons - Changed water profile from a mix of RO and tap to pure avoca tap - good for malty beers with dark grains - removed 1 lb cara 8 - added 0.5 lb special B - added 1lb Victory (Briess buiscut malt) - adjusted hops to gain a IBU/GU ratio of 0.5 - Added flaked barley for some creamy body -When I went to brew this beer I found I didn't have any chocolate malt, thought I had 5 lbs so the recipe changed on brew day to the following --removed 3/4lbs chocolate --added 1/2 lbs pale chocolate --added 1/2 lbs midnight wheat --hit my numbers dead nuts

Espresso anyone?

Smoker BBQ Pork Back Ribs

This is the third time I've smoked on a brew day and I'm here to tell you the two things just go together. If you prep the meat the day before it's so easy to toss it into the smoker and just check on it occasionally while you're brewing. Plus you have a delicious meal after all your hard work with minimal effort.

Here is the recipe and process for Fervent Brewer's Smoked Ribs.

1. Remove the membrane from the back of your ribs (if it's there).
2. Use a coffee base pork rub ( I like it spicy) and apply to ribs 24 hours before smoking.
3. Smoke with hickory wood for 2 hours then apply butter with a brush every 30 minutes for the next hour.
4. Lay out foil. Apply butter to the foil with brush then honey about 2-3 tablespoons (your choice of type) and a handful of dark brown sugar. Place top of ribs down into the butter,honey,brown sugar mixture. Wrap with foil and place back in smoker for another hour with the top facing back up so the honey and sugar run down over the ribs.
5. Remove ribs from foil and brush on your favorite BBQ sauce, place back in smoker for another 30 minutes.
6. Enjoy! So damn good!

Happy Brewing!