Dunkelweizen and Alte Braune

This is another double batch beer that I am going to be fermenting one half of it with a normal yeast for the style and souring the other half.  The Dunkelweizen is the second all grain recipe that I did after my switch from extract.  I took a keg of it to my work’s Christmas party and it was drained within a half hour (and we don’t have that many beer drinkers).  I told them I’d brew another keg of beer for the party and they all said “Make that beer you brought last year.”
I like Dunkelweizen, but not enough to drink 5 gallons of it by myself.  I’ll probably get enough of it at the party, but brewing a single batch of beer takes me as long as a double.  I got the idea of souring the second half and calling it an “Alte Braune”, Old Brown in German.  I am going to use Wyeast’s Roeselare Blend and rack the beer after a month or 2 to a Better Bottle.  I have heard that a Roeselare yeast cake changes as the bug count / Saccs ratio changes so I will add a 2nd beer after I rack this one.  I was thinking about making a Mild and souring that. 
When I rack the soured beer to the secondary I am going to add some dregs of Duchesse de Bourgogne and possible some Jolly Pumpkin La Roja if my local store ever gets some back in stock. 

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
11	Dark Wheat
7	Pilsner
2.5	Dark Munich
1	Caramunich II
1	Midnight Wheat
.75	Caramel Malt 120
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
15	Tettnanger	60
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
152F	60 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast I	White Labs WLP300 Hefeweizen
Yeast II	Wyeast 3763 Roeselare Ale Blend
Stats
12 gal	80% efficiency	IBU: 15

This is my mash tun at max capacity.  I might have been able to fit another pound of grain in …but it might make a mess.  I didn’t use any rice hulls in the mash and didn’t have any problems with my lautering.  Boil was pretty uneventful …All the protein in the wheat threatened to boil over a few times.  I ended up with 11.75 gallons of wort @ 1.059 *Note - I haven't ever used WLP300 before. I didn't realize it was such a violent fermenter ...and a true top cropping yeast.  Guess I should have used a blow-off tube!

(Ignore the horrible wallpaper)

Divination – Belgian Quad

 

This is my attempt at a Belgian Quad.  I wanted to try and make the beer how the monks would have made it.  They didn’t have tons of caramel and base malts to work with.  They got all of the color and flavor from different Candi sugars that they created onsite. For this recipe I used a very basic grain bill and homemade Candi sugar.  I cultured yeast from a Chimay Dubbel bottle a month before brewing.  I then did a month’s worth of step ups to the starter to get enough yeast to pitch into a beer that is close to 11.5% in alcohol.  The beer seemed to take a month to ferment out.  It was stable for weeks so I

put it in a Corny keg to bulk age at 60*, the ambient temperature of my basement.  The reason I said the beer seemed to ferment out before kegging … I released the pressure after 9 months to open the lid.  Once the lid was removed I had a foam geyser and lost 1/2 a gallon of beer.  Luckily with all the outward pressure didn’t allow anything in to infect the beer.  I re-lidded the beer and spent another month slowly degassing the beer so I’d be able to bottle it and have a general idea about the amount of CO2 I’d end up with.

The beer tastes great and I have been thinking about entering it into some Belgian beer competitions coming up.

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
7	Pilsner
7	Belgian 2 row
1	Sugar – 60 minutes
1	Amber Sugar – 30 minutes
1	Dark Sugar – 15 minutes
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
20	Northern Brewer	60
3.5	Saaz	30
3	Styrian Golding	30
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
147F	90 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast	Chimay Bottle Culture
Stats
5.5 gal	80% efficiency	IBU: 26-27

Purple Parsnip Pumpkin Stout–p3

I made this pumpkin stout last year as a request from my wife.  She told me she wanted a beer that was pumpkin pie in a bottle.  I thought about changing around my basic stout recipe to give it a roasted background.  I like coffee with my pumpkin pie.

This is version 2 of this recipe.  The first recipe I used 5.5 lbs. of pumpkin puree.  Even with a pound of rice hulls it still took hours to lauter.  This version I reduced the amount of pumpkin a bit …but I don’t think that it will affect the overall beer that much.  Pumpkin is mostly unfermentable and last year I lost about 20% of this beer to trub.

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
6	Maris Otter
3.75	Libby’s Pumpkin Puree
1	Toasted Quick Oats
.5	Chocolate Malt
.38 (6 oz.)	English Roasted Barley
1	Rice Hulls
1 tbsp.	Penzey's Pumpkin Pie Spice (Flameout)
1	Split Vanilla Bean - Secondary
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
20	Golding	60
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
156F	60 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast	Irish Ale
Stats
6 gal	80% efficiency	IBU: 20

Toast both the pumpkin and the oats in the oven the day before in a 350* oven.  Turn oats over every 15-30 minutes for about an hour.  Cook the pumpkin until it looks like pumpkin pie.  Put pumpkin in the fridge until brew day and put the oats in a paper bag to cool.

I always mash in with my grain in my cooler first then add the water on top of it.  I know people talk about dough balls but I have never had a problem with this.  Add all your grains and 1/2 of the rice hulls to the cooler and mix.  I then mash in with my water a bit higher than what Beersmith recommends and let it sit for a minute.  Then I stir in the additional rice hulls and pumpkin.

Normally I don’t rack beers to secondaries unless there is a good reason.  I rack this one since it has a lot of solids to clear out in the beer.  At bottling I usually adjust the pie spice up a bit by adding it to my bottling sugar syrup.