Marijuana Dubbel Trubbel

I came into some Blue Dream trimmings for cooking and wanted to put it in a beer. Wasn't sure how to do that, but with a little Google-ing I was able to find some interesting anecdote. Here I will add mine to the internet for your pleasure and learning.

For starters, I needed to modify my Dubbel Trubbel recipe for partial mash, since I am now in Colorado and the mash tun is not. Quirky's Homebrew was able to give me a lot of insight and assistance with building and modifying my recipe.

Here are all the ingredients:

• 6.6 lbs of liquid light malt extract
• 1 lb dry wheat malt extract
• 1 lb clear candi sugar
• 1 oz Northern Brewer hops (55 min)
• 1 oz Hallertau hops (10 min)

 
Of course, minus the grains, which were:

• 0.8 lbs Belgian CaraMunich 
• 0.8 lbs Belgian CaraVienne
• 0.3 lbs Belgian Biscuit 
• 0.3 lbs Belgian Aromatic kiln.

 There is one ingredient above that is not in that list:
14 grams of Blue Dream trimmings for cooking.

Here is a better photo of it. It was given to me for the express purpose of making beer with, and was already partially used for brownies. After a bunch of research, I stuck to a reddit post for my basis. 17 grams of this kind of stuff for 50 bottles will be about 50mg THC per bottle, and I want to probably have a bit less. On top of that, this is trimmings, so will probably be a little less potent. I decided to make sure that it is  decarboxylated by adding to the boil, rather than create a tincture. I am not quite a confident enough chemist to feel comfortable with alcohol fumes around the kitchen. Also, I didn't want to boil off any of the valuables in the special ingredient, so I didn't want to add to the boil too early. I ended up putting it with the last hop addition.

I used a Belgian high gravity trappist yeast since I am expecting to have about 7.3%ABV. I also wanted to make sure there is enough nutrients for those crazy yeasties so I bought the yeast nutrient too. Pretty cheap, and has never done me wrong. I usually feel uncomfortable without that when not doing all grain, but I haven't had a problem without it. 

Ok, so on to the brewing! I pulled out my old brew kit that went to storage when I left Texas! It has not gotten the love it needed over the last 3 and a half years of me living in Australia, so I am happy to have used it a second time in 2018 (first was the GeoStout which I will introduce in future). The burner had been all rusted and was making a black film of crud all over everything, so I bought a new Bayou Classic element and installed it with only a few problems. It now finally works after taking it apart a few times.

I started with 6.5 gallons of water and warmed it for mashing. The 'grain tea' was 50 minutes starting at 160F and was down to 150F at the end. I sparged with 2 litres from the electric kettle which was about 190F, then added the dry and liquid malt extracts and the candi sugar. Once it was boiling, I pitched the Northern Brewer hops and prepared the marijuana. I probably should have ground it up, but in the end I don't think it matters much. I was more worried about clogging my keggle than not getting all the THC potency. It looked (and felt) kind of silly to add the marijuana trimmings and the hop pellets together before the addition, but I felt like it's always easier and less likely to spill if I make all simultaneous additions at the same time. After 45 minutes, I added both the marijuana and the Hallertau hops, as well as the Whirlfloc.

After 10 minutes, I cut the flame, and started the chilling. My counterflow had been left with some water in it and froze (damn Colorado weather!), bursting the copper piping. It has since been replaced with a immersion coil chiller, which works fine. It takes about 10 minutes to go from 200F to 65F as long as the water is cold and you KEEP STIRRING CONSTANTLY! This is one thing I, as well as many other brewers, tend to forget. After chilling, I transferred to the fermenter, and pitched. OG was a comfortable 1.065 which is a bit lower than I expected but reasonable.

After clean-up I sampled the fluid siphoned off for measuring gravity, about 100ml. It has a light marijuana smell and almost no marijuana taste. Just good ol' Dubbel Trubbel! I waited the requisite 20-30 minutes and, being the lightweight I am, noticed a slight buzz. I think this will be a tasty beer with not-too-strong THC high following.

Tasting notes to come!