Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Yearly Update

Or is it a year late update? Been busy brewing beer, making beer brewing tools, and wishing the results were better.

The most recent adventure was Big Brew Day at Iron Hill Maple Shade NJ, celebrating National Homebrew Day. Ashley joined me and we brewed up a couple of goodies - Very Heffelberry III and a Dunkelweizen. We also had a couple food goodies, Shrimp Boil and Smoked BBQ pork. The shrimp boil was amazing, and will be a feature at gatherings in the future. Not many takers though, so into the cooler it went and I had leftovers for 2 meals. Yummy. I thought the smoked BBQ pork was going to be a bust, but in the end people really liked it. No leftovers there. I smoked it over hickory blocks instead of charcoal, and it was too much smoke. Next time I'll 'season' with the hickory blocks.


The head brewer at Iron Hill did a special pale malt mash for the group, some to use for the Iron Brewer competition, but I opted to use mine for a (not so) pale ale. The gravity was a smidgen low, so I mashed 14 lbs more Pale, & Victory (and maybe a few more?) in my new mash cylinder, but that was a disaster as it basically clogged totally, and I ended up spooning the wet mash into the BIAB bag, and continued on. In the end I might be OK anyway. I split the wort into 2 batches, and hopped with UK Fuggles in 1 and Kohatu in the other. Here's the mash cylinder in the pot before I mashed in. I'm going to try a standard grain crush the next time, and see if I can get it to act more like a mash tun, and sparge with it. I'll see how it goes.

The Kohatu was inspired by Cigar City Brewing Hopped on the High Seas: Kohatu. This is a New Zealand hop that is really good. I can't wait for it to be ready. Since it's not so pale I may have to reclassify it at an IPA. Then I can dry hop it too!

More brew tools discussion to follow.