We wanted a banana bomb hefe so we decided to try 3 different yeast strains in this brew.
We had a simple recipe with one decoction that actually turned into 3 as we kept undershooting our final temp.
The differences were greater than we expected. The Wyeast had the most banana. We carbonated at 3.5 volumes and it resulted in very fine bubbles and a lasting head.
It’s bee n 4 long years but we are back brewing again in a new venue, but with the same brew rig and same approach.
Today’s beer is a simple Blond Ale, with a small twist. We are using two row, pilsner and oats in the mash. we were looking for an ABV with a mid to low 4% range, full mouth-feel and, perhaps a bit of a cloudy appearance. Kind of a low abv hazy blonde.
Given the Covid-19 limitations on sourcing ingredients, we were unable to get the hops and yeast we were hoping for. Coastal Haze (White Labs WLP067) was replaced with WLP001 (a great yeast but very different). Liberty hops in our recipe were replaced by Willamette. We were able to get the grains, kölsch yeast (WPL029) for the split fermentation and some Cascade hops.
We are using Ekuanot (formally known as Equinox) cryo hops,(from our freezer stash) for our dry hop.
We were a bit behind the digital curve and downloaded the newest version of BeerSmith software and it was very easy to upgrade. All of our old recipes automatically showed up and we love the new version. Even after a long layoff, we hit our Mash temperature of 152 F easily and our original gravity (1.042) was only a single point higher than the software estimation. We feel like the brew day rust was easy to knock off and maybe we can brew some more this summer, too.
We are brewing a clone of Modern Times’ super delicious City of the Sun IPA.
Recipe below (supplied by the brewery via Beer Smith):
Ingredients include hop extract an we are fired up to use some of our hop jizz that has been sitting in the fridge for the past many months.
We are also stoked about a few new improvements to the brewery, including fresh transfer hoses, new valves and quick disconnects. The valves and disconnects are Blichmann’s finest.
We did not use the FermCapS that we usually use and had a boil-over on hop addition. Never again. Better living through chemistry.
Split batch, as usual, with one WLP001 and one WLP090. New White Labs packaging works well.
Hit the number for original gravity (1.060) on the nose.
All buttoned up and ready for fermentation. We were able to pitch yeast and Clarity Ferm straight out of the Therminator. Love that cold tap water.
We plan to brew something in two weeks and will rack the new wort on top of these two yeast cakes. Just got to figure out what our next recipe will be…
On September 27th, we brewed an amber ale featuring fresh, whole hops on the Maltose Falcons 40 gallon brewery.
After some grain mill problems, we were underway.
The star of the show:
The hops were brought by a hop farmer friend of the club’s president.
The grain bill is above. The other hops employed are below. We did not find the second bag of golden promise, so we substituted with 14lbs Maris Otter.
Cascade was used as a mash hop.
Mash-in at 152° 75 lbs into 80 quarts. 1.060 OG was the goal. Nailed it.
We added the big sack of fresh hops as a late addition.
The process was fun and the equipment was excellent. The HERMS setup was very cool and automatic temperature control made things very easy.
Took home two carboys of ~4 gallons each.
One was WLP 090 San Diego Super and the other WLP 013 London Ale. The 090 was much better. Hops on display.
Today’s brew was a Scottish 70 shilling, built on Jamil’s Brewing Classic Styles recipe.
All numbers were hit except mash temp, which was undershot by a few degrees.
Further improvements were made to the brewery, including new hoses, three new 3 piece valves and all new quick disconnects. The stainless was all Blichmann
The brew day went pretty smoothly. The fresh hop red ale was kegged, with some overflow onto the garage floor. 4 gallons into a3 gallon keg will do that…
Had an odd assortment of beers while brewing…
Filled the fermenters, cleaned up and were done in 6.5 hours.
We bottled six of our most recent beers for the national homebrewers conference competition.
Using the Blichmann beer gun and newly purchased speed racks, the event went smoothly.
We have two versions of Kölsch, two Gose, a barleywine, and a pale ale.
Well. I know. It’s been quite a while since we brewed. I’m sorry. We had more than enough beer to keep us going deep into the summer. And we have not run dry yet.
But all slow times must come to an end, so we decided on a whim to fire up the brew rig and get brewing again. After many fine beers at the LA Beer Week Kick-Off party, we decided on a session beer with Moteka hops. We went on a hop buying binge earlier in the spring and had 4 oz of this and a few other hops in the freezer. On the shelf was 20 plus pounds of 2-row, some odd grains and some wheat. We sat down with our favorite software, BeerSmith, and wrote up a simple recipe with what we had on hand. It turned out to be 17 lbs of Western Malting 2-row and 1 lb of wheat. Simple. A nice starting point for what we believe will be an evolving recipe. We added the single hop, but with a twist. We had a bunch of hop extract left over from the Blind Pig Clone in June. That became the bittering 60 minute hop. In the Blind Pig Clone, the flavor was perfect. time to try it in a much lighter and lower IBU beer. We plugged in all of the hops and this is what we got… 13 IBU’s from the extract, and a few more from a super late charge at 10 min, 1 min and whirlpool. When we went to the shop to get a few more hops for the dry hop, the instinct was to go with 2 oz for the whole dry hop. The aroma is so good on this hops and the alcohol is so low, we decided to double that and go short on the contact time. We shall see how this works.
The brew day went super smooth. No issues at all and we ended up with 11.5 gallons at the end in which we used the new White Labs Clarity Ferm in the fermenter. This is the second time that we have used this product and we were super impressed with the last attempt. We only used it in one fermenter on our normal 10 gallon batch and there was almost no difference between the two as far as taste went. I can’t wait to use this a bit more and see if some of our gluten free friends like the beer.
We will probably keg the beer very soon and from the samples so far, it seems to be on the right track. We might add to the super simple grain bill, but only one grain at a time. Fermentation was quick and the beer now sits at 1.005 SG from a start of 1.042. Yeast was the hard working US-05 and the Dry 97.
We are brewing a Helles. We will ferment half on Munich Helles yeast and half on Mexican lager yeast.
We softened our water by cutting it in half with distilled.
Pretty straightforward brew day except we missed our pre-boil gravity by a few points. All fixed by a 90 minute boil.
Recipe variation from a pure Helles (other than the 5 gallons on Mexi yeast) includes Hallertau Mittelfrueh (straight-up Hallertau was unavailable) and a pound of Cara-Pils to add body/head retention.
This is what happens when a nice 1.070 wort meets some WLP 001 Cal Ale Yeast it loves. This was after 2 days of fermentation at 60 degrees F.
Today we are brewing a pale ale and a clone of Ballast Point’s Sculpin IPA.
The pale ale went swimmingly, with absolutely no problems other than a pump issue.
The trouble from our pump #1 was a slow flow.. We took it apart and reassembled it as all looked good. It was sucking in air and we thought it was time to use the Oetiker clamps on our brew rig houses.
We mashed in a couple of degrees above our 148 target for the IPA but were able to get it down with some stirring and leaving the lid off.
We mashed in at the same time we did flame out on the pale ale.
We racked the pale on to our Kölsch yeast cakes (after racking the Kölsch into secondary fermenters) at 60 to 62 degrees.
Racking finished just as we needed the pump to begin our recirculation. We had to wait 10 minutes to clean the boil kettle and fly sparge. Nice 70 minute mash.
The 4 ounces of 60 minute hops are pictured above. Crystal, Magnum, Northern Brewer, Warrior and Columbus. that’s on top of an ounce of first wort hop.
While putting in the hops we checked gravity and found it short by 17 points! No idea how that happened, especially with a long mash, except that in this batch we did not add any 5.2. Weird.
Soon after, we had a boil over and lost a bunch of hop matter. Amateur move…
30 minute hops went fine, except we did not have enough crystal. We substituted a third of the weight with Northern Brewer.
We added some LME and DME at the 15 minute mark to bring the gravity up to target.
Flame out hops and into the fermenters it went. Long day.
Los Angeles Brewers 