El Presidenté

 Yesterday was the day! I finally got around to making the White House Honey Ale that I got from Northern Brewer. It smelled amazing and is popping away despite the fact that I used dry yeast, which was something I didn't want to do, but decided if I was going to do it like the White House said, I would stick to their recipe.  If things go one way next month, we may see more White House recipes; if things go the other way we may never see White House beer again! This was, however, one of the easiest beers I have made in a long while!  For starters, the kit was all made up, the grain came pre-crushed, there was an instructions list, and hop schedule.  All I had to do was follow instructions! My setup was even a little overkill for the beer...


The process was just like the partial mash brews I used to do on the stovetop, so I filled up my keggle, brought the water to 152F, plopped in the grain sack, and mashed. Plucked it out after a small mashout of up to 170F, brought to a boil, added the Golden Liquid Malt Extract and the Breiss DME. Brought to a boil again for 15 minutes and added 1.5oz of UK Kent Golding, boiled 30 more minutes, added 1.5oz of UK Fuggle, boiled for 10, added the honey and kept a boil for 5 minutes, then killed the heat. A quick siphon through the counterflow and then pitch the (rehydrated) yeast with a touch of yeast nutrients, and voila! Not much more to it than that. And without all the grain I was left with very little cloudiness in the wort. I really have to start taking pictures of the process steps, because I have noticed that I have a lot of photos of the same stuff on here.

Northern Brewer really did charge me a little much for having the kit pre-made  but this one was for nostalgias sake. It will go to secondary and bottle before (hopefully) I head to Vegas so I can pop one open right when I come back to pore over the election results. Also, Not going to work too hard on the label, but might steal some good ones from the internet...                                          thinking of this one:





                                              Or this one, as it came:




             Thoughts?



Lastly, I bottled the Dead Ringer IPA as well, so that will be ready to open right before I leave town for a week! Tasting notes on both to come. Next week: Bière du Père Fouettard! A Holiday beer for all to fear... 

Post-brew/post-weekend followup

After starting early with the assistance of a brew-virgin, the IPA brewing was finished by 1pm on Saturday, but the heat and the hangover were a little more than I was willing to handle to brew the Presidents beer, so he'll have to wait a few days.

The Dead Ringer, which I have yet to give a proper name, was a fairly simple recipe that I was surprised to find has only one type of hops.  Makes it not too complicated but also not too complex.
   60mins - 0.75oz Cascade Style
   20mins - 1oz Cascade Style
     5mins - 2oz Cascade Style
   Dry Hop in Secondary - 1oz Cascade Style

The grain bill was equally simple with 11# Rahr 2 row and 1# Breiss Caramel 40.  I might play with that in the future to get a bit more sweetness and color, but for this time it seemed ok.  I mashed for 60 mins, at 152-155F depending on the fluctuation in temp, stirring nearly every 10 with my new mash paddle, which I love.  I'm going to have to figure out a way to keep my temp more regular during this process, as I think I am losing efficiency there. At the end I sparged with 2.5gallons of 170F water and started the boil.

It perfectly came out to 5+ gallons after the boil and the chilling process, but I did forget to add the BreakBrite again.  I hope that isn't a problem.  Hasn't seemed to be in the past. I am excited to see what it comes out like!

Now.... Just need to come up with names and art ideas ...

Here is my most recent labelling attempt. It's already on bottles and waiting to be drunk!








~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now here is why I did not brew on Sunday... There was already too much awesome in the day!

What a wonderful day to brew!

It has been a while because of various events: camping on the beach for a sunrise swim with the dolphins, a road trip to Austin for BearFeast, getting tossed about the Guadalupe River on tubes... you know, the normal. In any case, I felt like trying two new things today.  The first, I decided to attempt a Northern Brewer recipe because IPA does not tend to be my strong point.  Dead Ringer sounded good, and I have spoken to both my parents and both my brothers about it, so I decided to give it a whirl.  Quite the box arrived at my door with all that grain and my new mash paddle! The second new thing is the Presidential White House Honey Ale (extract kit) which I got all the ingredients up for... So here goes! Gonna start the mash for Dead Ringer early.  9:15am on a Saturday.

More posts to come ...