6 replies to this topic

[Shadowmage36]

(Go figure. The day I get my registration validated on the GB I find a link to this place! So hello, everyone. Here's my first contribution to what is clearly an excellent board.)This is my recipe for this year's holiday brew (last year was a chocolate orange porter. Not too bad, but didn't age well. hoping this does better).Holitastic(makes 5 gallons)8 lbs 6-row3 lbs 20L crystal1 lb black patent2 oz. Cascade plugs (40 min)0.5 oz. Saaz leaf (5 min)0.5 oz. Saaz leaf (flameout)1 lb orange blossom honey1 oz. bitter orange peel1 giant cinnamon stick (break into chunks)1 oz. candied ginger1 tsp Irish moss2 tsp. bentoniteWLP-002 English Ale YeastMash in at 129F to 3 gallons of water to stabilize around 120F for a 30 minute protein rest. Raise temperature to 150F for a one-hour saccharification rest, and mash out at 170F. Transfer to lauter tun with enough water at 165-170F to reach the false bottom. Sparge over ~40 minutes to collect ~6 gallons of wort in your brew kettle. Get this heating to a boil at once. Then collect approximately another 3/4 of a gallon of wort in a separate pot. (We used a 15 gallon lauter tun with a false bottom about 2 inches off the actual bottom. When we had collected all the wort we wanted, the water level was at the false bottom). At this point the gravity of what you're collecting will be quite low, but that's ok. Put this on your stove and start it at a high boil. You're going to be adding this into your brew kettle later, once it's boiled down to about 1/3-1/2 of its current volume. At any rate, add it into your main kettle just before you add your first hops. Stir it well and then take a sample for gravity to get your brew efficiency. If that matters to you (my buddy and I were trying to see how our new setup worked. We got about 83% efficiency with the extra extraction. And no harsh tannins! woot!).Once the main kettle gets up to a boil, wait five minutes, then add your Cascade plugs and start the timer for 40 minutes. With 30 minutes left in the boil, add your honey. Remove the pot from the heat when you do this (Duh!). Then, with 10 minutes left in the boil, add your first Saaz addition, plus spices, Irish moss, and bentonite. The instant you take your kettle off the heat, add the second addition of Saaz hops. Chill it, filter into your fermenter, check your O.G., and pitch the yeast. Put a blowoff tube on it if you're using a carboy (which I do), and put it away for a few days. When the main fermentation has died down a bit, switch to an airlock and let it go for a total of about 10 days, then rack to secondary until the gravity stabilizes. Then bottle and let sit for a while.This is the first time I brewed this (10/10/2009 was the brew day), and I plan on drinking it around Christmas or New Years. I'm hoping it's going to be very tasty then, as the raw wort after the boil tasted amazing. Nice, dark color but a very spicy and light flavor. I think this should be a good one!

[ncbeerbrewer]

Welcome to BB. As it looks from reading your posting you already brewed this beer but it sounds like it was a successful brew session. Congrats. Recipe looks nice but I have one question. Did you really use 3lbs of Crystal malt? Just asking as that seems like an immense amount of crystal malt to me. Anyways thanks for sharing the recipe and hope this one turns out as you want it. So your collection trick you mentioned you collected the final end runnings and boiled that down? It would have been interesting to see if you got a gravity change from your collected wort to the final work with your boiled portion added. Hey 83% is a great efficiency so great work as well. Your recipe from last year sounds interesting post it up if you can, how did you add your orange flavor? Welcome to the board. Mike

[Shadowmage36]

Yes, really did use 3 lbs of crystal. It's going to be a little...full-bodied, I'm sure. Not that I mind, as it's supposed to be a good beer for drinking on those cold winter nights. I do have the recipe from last year, but I'm going to have to wait to post that until later tonight, as it's on my computer at home, and I'm currently at the office. However, we got the orange flavor in there the same way we did it for this brew: Dried bitter orange peels. For the chocolate we used an entire box of Hershey's powdered baking chocolate. Other than that it was just 6 lbs of dark DME and maybe a half pound of black patent or chocolate malt and a little crystal for body. I completely forget what hops we used. It's not in this year's Brewhaus Records folder so I don't have it with me right now, but I promise I shall post it later!

[Big Nake]

Wow, 3 lbs of Crystal 20°L and an entire pound of Black Patent? Holy smokes, whatta beer. I hope it comes out nicely. Cheers and welcome.

[Jimmy James]

The name is a little too close to "holistic" While I don't subscribe to the "no more than 0.5 lbs of crystal malt" conventional wisdom of this board, 3 lbs in 5 gallons is further than I have gone. I will be staying tuned to read more. The 1 lb of Black Patent scares me though Honestly, can't wait to read about how this one turned out. And welcome to the insanity.

[cavman]

The name is a little too close to "holistic" While I don't subscribe to the "no more than 0.5 lbs of crystal malt" conventional wisdom of this board, 3 lbs in 5 gallons is further than I have gone. I will be staying tuned to read more. The 1 lb of Black Patent scares me though Honestly, can't wait to read about how this one turned out. And welcome to the insanity.

Im the main guy on less crystal it seems but it is .75#, I can't imagine 3# in a 5 gallon beer. I like crystal malt to compliment a beer not dominate the beer, I'd rather mash base malt higher for more unfermentables. I do like to use multiple crystals in a beer totaling my top level. And agreed black patent is like spices as in "a little goes a long way".

[Shadowmage36]

Im the main guy on less crystal it seems but it is .75#, I can't imagine 3# in a 5 gallon beer. I like crystal malt to compliment a beer not dominate the beer, I'd rather mash base malt higher for more unfermentables. I do like to use multiple crystals in a beer totaling my top level. And agreed black patent is like spices as in "a little goes a long way".

Yeah, my brew buddy and I both agreed we likely had a little too much black patent. I'm not as worried about all the crystal, though, because of how the saccharification rest went. Since we brewed inside on an electric stove I had to turn the heat up slowly so as not to burn the mash. This caused a much longer delay in the 140F-148F range than we had originally planned before getting up to the desired rest temp of 150F. So we likely converted a lot more of the starch to fermentables rather than dextrines. It'll still be interesting, to be sure, but the gravity sample from the boil kettle at the end tasted AMAZING. We'll see how it is by Christmas.