Win "Rocky" Win

I could wax poetic, but the essence of this clip says it all!

Brew Day Notes using Hippity Hops Farms 2010 Cascade Hops!

Just wanted to write up an update on how the brew day went for my personal notes and obviously to share.

I have some great pics of all the fresh hops floating in the brew kettle that I'll update later on! I'm starting to think that using whole hops is a lot easier then using the pellets. Yeah, you have to use more water to compensate for the water absorption, but man it's nice to see the real deal boiling away!

Mashed in at 155
Took a PH reading of the mash after stirring and it read 4.8
Took another PH reading after 60 minutes and it read 5.0
Sparged at 170
Took a PH reading and it was at 4.6
(I THINK THESE PH STRIPS DON'T GIVE A PROPER READING..UGGH)
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According to Desirable pH’s

Brewing liquor – pH 6.2-6.6
Pre- boiled wort - ~pH 5.5
Post-boil wort – ~pH 5.2
Finished product – pH 3.9-4.2

Looks like I need to test my brewing liquor, and then the pre-biol wort on my next brew, and then hopefully it will all fall in line from there. I definitely need to figure this out because I should be getting better efficiency!
___________________________________________

I mashed high to have a nice big mouthfeel for this beer. I sparged right on 170 degrees and was hoping this would help my efficiency, but it was still extremely low. Somewhere in the 60-65% sugar extraction range. I'm assuming some of that has to do with my high mash temp, but would love advice from anyone about how to increase my efficiency.

I ended up collecting almost 6 gallons but that will come down to around 5.5 gallons of finished beer when I subtracted wort loss due to my dry hop absorbtion, yeast cake, and trub.

Currently fermenting at 66 degrees ambient temp in my basement.  Chuggin away nicely!

Can't wait to see how these Hippity Hops taste!

first wort hop

Surly Fest with Surly Fest Beer Brats for Oktoberfest!

Organic Harvest Brown Ale

I purchased all of the ingredients to brew up my Native Brown Bitter Ale again for this reaping season.  This is the same base recipe I did last year with locally grown Cascades.  This year I didn't get free Cascade hops from the guy in New Hope, but I did get a pound of organic cascade hops from Hippity Hop Farms!  While technically they aren't "certified" organic, this is only because you have to be farming organically for 3 years for certification.  From my talks with Hippity Hops very own Paul P., they should be getting certified after next years harvest!   I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing this time around as Hippity Hops tested the IBU's of their 2010 crop to a result of 6.4% AA!  Cheers to Hippity Hop for doing it right in the Twin Cities!   Not to many changes to the recipe this year, but I'm thinking I'll make it a little more bitter and dank...not too dank though.   I did buy mostly Organic grains to go with my hops.  Breiss has organic 2-row, and also Organic Chocolate at Midwest Brew Supply!   With all of the ingredients I bought for the recipe, it looks like this one will by 89% organic!  I don't think that's enough to be certified organic, but it is in my book!

Organic Native Brown Bitter Ale

malt & fermentables

%	LB	OZ	Malt or Fermentable	ppg	°L
79%	10	0	Breiss Organic Two-row Pale	37	1
8%	1	0	American Crystal 10L	34	10
6%	0	12	Breiss Organic Chocolate	34	127
4%	0	8	Special Roast	33	50
2%	0	4	American Crystal 120	34	120
1%	0	2	Roasted Barley	25	300
	12	10

Batch size: 5.5

Original Gravity / Final Gravity

1.045 / 1.005

Color

18° SRM / 36° EBC

(Light Brown to Medium Brown)

hops

use	time	oz	variety	form	aa
FW	60+ mins	2.0	Organic Cascade from Hippity Hop Farms	leaf	6.4
boil	10 mins	1.5	Organic Cascade from Hippity Hop Farms	leaf	6.4
boil	1 min	1.5	Organic Cascade from Hippity Hop Farms	leaf	6.4
DH	7 days	2.0	Organic Cascade from Hippity Hop Farms	leaf	6.4

Bitterness

52.4 IBU

yeast 

Wyeast British Ale II - 1335

Alcohol

5.7% ABV

Original Gravity:	1.048
Final Gravity:	1.005
Initial Gravity (Plato):	11.91° P
Final Gravity (Plato):	1.28° P
Real Extract:	3.21° P
Apparent Attenuation:	89.2%
Real Attenuation:	73.1%
Alcohol By Volume (ABV):	5.7%
Alcohol By Weight (ABW):	4.5%
Calories (12 ounces):	155

BREW LOCAL, DRINK LOCAL...GET LOCO!

Northeast Homebrew Clubs first meeting TOMORROW!

Hey All,

We are starting up a Homebrew club in Northeast Minneapolis!   I know a bunch of us are pumped to meet up and see what's brewin in Nordeast and we encourage everyone to come meet up, and see if you wanna be a part of the crew.  Share some stories of brewing and drinking and stuff.   Hope you all can make it!   Hopefully I'll have a few tasty Dank brews to share with everyone.   I do have some bottles of my DIPA "The Chronic" that I'll be sharing, and some Belgians if Grumpy's in NE is OK with that.  They have a nice local tap list as well... so fun will be had by all! 

Grumpy's NE
Saturday September 18th
4pm -6pm

Come with an open mind, an outgoing personality, and ready to meet new people and hopefully develop lasting friendships and brewing relationships!   I think we have some great brewers in NE and if we don't we'll work to get mo betta! 

Potential topics-

• Growing Hops in NE
• Adjusting the local brew water for the best beer possible in NE, or anywhere for that matter.
• How to get started brewing
• A possible Name for the homebrew club (official, or nickname)
• Critiquing homebrewers beers, wines, meads, etc (samplings galor)

My dog likes beer in Nordeast, you should too!

Nordeast Brewers blog

Cheers,

Nick

Bob Marley - Dub Feeling (Feel Alright Dub Version)

  I love how raw and simple this bad boy is.  I only wish it was a longer version, or an extra verse in there.

Keggle conversion and tap room upgrade pics

Kanser pushin the positivity

This dude seems cool man!

Maxing out a 54 quart cooler using batch sparge!

With all of the hop talk going on right now I couldn't resist brewing up a nice Hoppy ale. I was considering an Ordinary Bitter as it's a style that I've never done. It seemed like everything was in line for that brew. The project OG was 1.032 with projected ABV at 3.2%. It was going to represent the fact that my wife and I have made it to a huge benchmark in the pregnancy of our first child. We've made it to 32 weeks. 32 weeks is huge because "little P" should now have fully developed lungs. Huge sigh of relief! Unfortunately 3.2% abv isn't huge, and didn't really seem like a good representation of the "little lion man's" achievement of cooking for 32 whole weeks. I decided instead to do something worthy of this little man...so I went for a beer that I thought would max out my system as he is currently trying to max our Melissa's belly.    Know, if I was doing a 5 gallon batch, that would be a big as beer. But I've been contemplating lately on how big a beer can I do, on my equipment, with my process of batch sparging, in a 10 gallon batch. I've tried to speculate, looked online for calculators, asked Denny Conn himself on a forum, all to no avail. I really didn't know how far I could push this system.  I decided the only way to find out is to just go for it.   I know I can do a small beer like the Patersbier I did, but that only had 18 lbs of grains. I like my beers to have around 20-25+ lbs of grain typically. I'm talking in the 5-6% range depending on mash temp, and efficiency, and yeast attenuation. So, here is my system.

• 54 quart Igloo cooler (Mash Tun)
• Keggle for boil (Boil Kettle)

The most important part of this list is the 54 quart cooler.   I decided to brew up a 10 gallon batch of the GF Hop Head Red clone that I brewed up this spring.  That thing was damn tasty and I wouldn't mind 10 gallons hanging around.  I mashed it a bit higher hoping for a thicker mouthfeel and that was about the only change I'm going to make.   This beer has almost 26 lbs of grain and should be around a 6% beer.   I decided that I'd just max out the mash tun and fill it to the brim in the mash and the sparge.  I ended up collecting about 10.5 gallons for my boil.  So....close, right?.   I ended up adding 2 more gallons and double sparging.   Oops...guess this beer was too big for my system.  I'm thinking that my systems is probably maxed out at about 21-22 lbs of grain.   Sure, I could graduate to fly sparging, then I could probably do a 1080+ beer on this system, but I still like the - "set it and forget it" - of batch sparging.    Can anyone out there convince me to make the leap to fly sparging? Or, should I just buy a bigger cooler?  120 quart maybe?

Reaping Night- Red Ale (GF Hop Head Red Clone)

Green Flash Hop Head Red Ale Clone (10 gallon)
% LB OZ Malt or Fermentable
62% 16 0 American Two-row Pale
23% 6 0 Munich Malt
8% 2 0 Flaked Oats
2% 0 8 American Crystal 120L
2% 0 8 American Crystal 40L
2% 0 8 American Crystal 80L
0% 0 2 Chocolate Malt
     25lb 10oz
Original Gravity
1.052 (actual ?)  I dropped my hydrometer
Final Gravity
1.010
Color
14° SRM / 27° EBC
(Copper to Red/Lt. Brown)

hops
60 mins 2.0 Chinook
10 mins 1.0 Amarillo
5 mins 1.0 Amarillo
1 min 2.0 Amarillo
dry hop 6.0 Amarillo

Bitterness
63.7 IBU 


***Stay tuned for many new upgrades to my brew house, tap room, and also for my hop harvest!
***If you've read The Dark Tower series then you may recognize the name of this beer.   If you haven't read The Dark Tower series by Steven King....I'd highly recommend it.   The Reaping Night is basically a reference to the party of the Harvest!