Los Angeles Brewers

In, yet another, brutal, rain-soaked brew day, we managed to make 10 gallons of blonde ale.

10 gallons are dosed with Safale US-05 and 10 are with our starter batch of WLP-550 Trappist yeast.

Despite the downpour, our process worked well. We overshot our temperatures by 5 degrees or so, as our losses were negligible in the cold weather. We broke a beautiful 6 gallon carboy (as it barely kissed another carboy during cleaning).

We got 70% efficiency and hit our beginning gravity on the spot.

The fermenters were going strong within 12 hours.

We are hoping to include both in our AHA competition entries (due in 9 days). Cutting it close.

Recipe: 03.20.2011 One Eight Blonde Ale v3

For the first time in many years: a boil over on the kitchen sink. These flasks are shaped in such a way that they can get into a boil over situation pretty quick. Beware.

We bought a 2 liter Erlenmeyer flask and a bag of DME along with our usual blonde ale ingredients.

We are going to do a split batch of 5 gallons each American Safale US-05 and White Labs WLP500 Trappist. There was only one vial of Trappist available so we needed to do a yeast starter.

While an overnight starter will not yield massive amounts of yeast cells, but we should get a good start.

The Yeast book by Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff suggests putting the flask on the burner with 2 liters of water and 200 grams of DME. This is exactly what was done.

While one of us was skiing in the Sierras, the other was hard at work, brewing a weiss beer.

60% efficiency and another stuck kettle were hallmarks of this single handed attempt. The result (now only half fermented) is tasting damn good.

It was decided that half the 10 gallon batch would be racked over cherries. As cherries are out of season, we found some frozen cherries to put in one fermenter.

More on this later…

Today’s brew is an American Brown Ale. Our recipe is based off Janet’s Brown in the Brewing Classic Styles book.

Hops in the mash makes this one novel for us.

Mash in was a couple of degrees above our 154 target, but with the lid off, it quickly cooled to perfection.

Who says it never rains in L.A.?

It has been pouring for two days. That’s not stopping brew day, however.

Another lager is being born. This one is a Bitburger style.

We hit our temps this time pretty well. Hoping this one comes out right.

We kegged the lager after a long primary.   The temperature was always a bit too low.  At least until we got our fermentation heater.  I think we could cut at least a week off of our ferment time now that we can raise as well as lower the temps.

We brought out Blond American and American IPA to a fund-raiser at Verdugo (verdugobar.com)

We got some good tasting notes from Ryan Sweeney (owner and Cicerone). Looking forward to incorporating his input into our next beer (for which we bought ingredients earlier in the day).

We served two of our beers at a charity event this Saturday. The blonde (American yeast) and the IPA (also American yeast).

They seemed well received. We have our serving set-up pretty well squared away.

We have another event in a couple of weeks. We might serve the Belgian blonde and Belgian-American IPA beers then. This event is being held at the Verdugo Bar in the Glassell Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. It is known for serving the best beers in the city. In fact, the owner is LA’s first Cicerone so the bar is set very high.

Dry yeast is doing its job. Only six weeks to go.