St. Patricks Day 2013

OK, I'm planning early for a change. I was excited to see it falls on a weekend this year so I thought I might throw a party.

I'm thinking of brewing three beers, a Dry/Oatmeal Stout, a Irish Red, and the third is up in the air. I wanted to brew something I could dye green. But I can't do lagers. What other light beers would you suggest? I would kind of like a clearer beer to bring out the green better...

Also what do you guys have planned?

Just finished a Muntons Mexican Cerveza for my daughter (she likes the lighter beers) that would be perfect for dying. I'm doin' a dry stout on Friday that should be just right by 3/17.

A light Cream Ale works great to dye green!

I'm brewing 11 gallons of a Dry Irish Stout on Saturday! No party plans as of yet but those will come!

My kegs are finally going to go back into service this St. Pats. A bunch of my old roommates are coming into town, so I'm trying to have 20 gallons on cask for the week/weekend. Not sure what's going to be filling them, we have yet to sort that part out.

I plan on staying home. a pro going out on amateur night is like Bob Ross bragging about his happy trees looking better than a 4 year old's finger painting.

Funny you posted this. I bottled 5 gallons of Irish Red last week and will be bottling 5 gallons of Oatmeal Stout on Thursday. I will be making an English Bitter in the coming week or two. Now there is a good one to dye green.

I've got an idea for a 'green clover stout', a deep dark stout racked over fresh clover and flowers, and then primed with clover honey. Need to find a supply of fresh clover, but even at this time of year that shouldn't be a problem here.

How do you plan to dye the beer green. I have been thinking about doing the same thing.

Great ideas, I like the idea of a Cream Ale because they are so drinkable to light beer drinkers! Even SWMBO is excited about that one.

That Clover beer sounds awesome, would like to follow up on that.

For the green colour, I've read you need to add a considerable amount of BLUE colouring to the keg/bottles. Theory was that yellow beer + blue dye = green beer

thetmaxx said:

Great ideas, I like the idea of a Cream Ale because they are so drinkable to light beer drinkers! Even SWMBO is excited about that one.

That Clover beer sounds awesome, would like to follow up on that.

For the green colour, I've read you need to add a considerable amount of BLUE colouring to the keg/bottles. Theory was that yellow beer + blue dye = green beer

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Ya I was planning on just experimenting and seeing what worked best.

I was planning on a dry oatmeal stout as well! I'm thinking about toasting the oats. What are you thinking about?

tennesseean_87 said:

I was planning on a dry oatmeal stout as well! I'm thinking about toasting the oats. What are you thinking about?

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I hadn't planned it out yet, I need to look into dry stouts, then I was thinking of just modifing my existing oatmeal stout recipe. Now that you mention it though I saw an episode of brewing tv where john palmer was toasting oats and it looked like something i'd like to try.

Northern Brewer has an Irish Blonde kit that you could probably dye easily. I've brewed it once and it was very nice.

Here's the Irish Blonde Recipe:
MASH INGREDIENTS
-- 9.75 lbs. Rahr 2-row pale
-- 1 lbs. Flaked Barley
-- 1 lbs. Fawcett Oat Malt
MASH SCHEDULE: SINGLE INFUSION
Sacch’ Rest: 152° F for 60 minutes
Mashout: 170° F for 10 minutes
BOIL ADDITIONS & TIMES
0.75 oz. Palisade (60 min)
1 oz. Palisade (15 min)
YEAST
DRY YEAST (DEFAULT):
Safale S-04.
Optimum temperature: 64–75°F
LIQUID YEAST OPTION:
Wyeast #1084 Irish Ale Yeast.
Optimum temperature: 62–72°F
IRISH BLONDE ALE (All Grain)
BOIL ADDITIONS & TIMES
-- 0.75 oz. Palisade (60 min)
-- 1 oz. Palisade (15 min)

thetmaxx said:

I hadn't planned it out yet, I need to look into dry stouts, then I was thinking of just modifing my existing oatmeal stout recipe. Now that you mention it though I saw an episode of brewing tv where john palmer was toasting oats and it looked like something i'd like to try.

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I'm thinking about a typical dry stout, but replacing half the flaked barley with toasted oats and using some chocolate in place of about 1/3 of the roasted barley. I'll probably bitter to about .9 IBU:GU

doubletapbrewing said:

How do you plan to dye the beer green. I have been thinking about doing the same thing.

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Here are my results from last St. Patty's day. Any pale beer would work. I just used a few drops of green food coloring.

Also, car bombs with green Bailey's :-D

Irish Blonde looks like it would be a good option too.

Ryush806, that green beer looks exactly like what I'm hoping for!

thetmaxx said:

Irish Blonde looks like it would be a good option too.

Ryush806, that green beer looks exactly like what I'm hoping for!

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Yup! It turned out great. We put two drops in the bottom of a glass and then poured the beer on top of it. If you want to to be green from the start I guess you could extrapolate that out to 106 drops for a 5 gallon batch and mix it in when you keg/bottle.

Ryush806 said:

Yup! It turned out great. We put two drops in the bottom of a glass and then poured the beer on top of it. If you want to to be green from the start I guess you could extrapolate that out to 106 drops for a 5 gallon batch and mix it in when you keg/bottle.

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Ahh, tht was my plan, see how many drops it took for one beer then do the math for 5 gallons, thank you for the numbers, your making it easy!!

thetmaxx said:

Ahh, tht was my plan, see how many drops it took for one beer then do the math for 5 gallons, thank you for the numbers, your making it easy!!

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No prob. You might experiment with your beer to make sure. To be honest I was using coors light so if you beer has any flavor or color to it you might want three drops instead of two.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/centennial-blonde-simple-4-all-grain-5-10-gall-42841/

This is a great beer and I'm sure you could use drops to make it green. When ever I have made green beer, I use 1 or 2 drops of green food coloring in each glass.

Got a cream ale brewed yesterday. Kind of built my own recipe out of a bunch of other cream ales. One thing is for sure, using all that rice and corn I should have used rice hulls, it took a while to run clear. Otherwise I got to try out my new pH meter and got the beer right on target. I've never brewed anything so light, you could see the bottom of the kettle and when the hops went in it turned olive drab, LOL

So hopefully I will be able to brew up the Dry Stout this weekend. I'm getting closer on time than I had hoped but we are in the begining stages of a much needed kitchen remodel

Just bottled an Irish Red on Saturday, and it's staying red!

Make a kolsch!

I just brewed up my stout. I went with:
68% 2 row
12% flaked oats (toasted 350F for 30 min)
8% flaked barley
7% roasted barley
5% chocolate

OG: 1.041
IBU: 36

tennesseean_87 said:

I just brewed up my stout. I went with:
68% 2 row
12% flaked oats (toasted 350F for 30 min)
8% flaked barley
7% roasted barley
5% chocolate

OG: 1.041
IBU: 36

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Looks like a winner...my stout has about a week to go til kegging...can't wait to pull the first one...