Gypsy Head Strong Ale /Carrot Ale/Sweet Potato Ale

Fermentables
Ingredient Amount % MCU When
Belgian Aromatic Malt 8.00 oz 3.8 % 1.9 Steeped 60min
Belgian Biscuit Malt 8.00 oz 3.8 % 2.2 Steeped 60min
German CaraMunich I 8.00 oz 3.8 % 3.5 Steeped 60min
Belgian Special B 8.00 oz 3.8 % 14.7 Steeped 60min
Golden Light LME 6lb 0oz 46.2 % 4.1 Start Of Boil
Amber DME 4lb 0oz 30.8 % 8.4 Start Of Boil
Bavarian Wheat DME 1lb 0oz 7.7 % 1.6 Start Of Boil


Hops
Variety Alpha Amount IBU Form When
US Chinook 12.0 % 0.75 oz 16.3 Pellet 70 Min From End
US Chinook 12.0 % 0.75 oz 13.8 Pellet 40 Min From End
US Chinook 12.0 % 0.75 oz 9.5 Pellet 20 Min From End
US Chinook 12.0 % 0.75 oz 0.0 Pellet At turn off
US Cascade 4.5 % 1.00 oz 0.0 Whole Dry-Hopped

Yeast
White Labs WLP001-California Ale

Steep Notes
Strike temp 157, temp dropped to 150, applied heat and walked away, caught it again at 162, added cool water, 0.6gl to cool it back down, paid closer attention and maintained heat right around 153 for remainder of 60min steep


Boil Notes
Right, so ****ed up the boil. Added hops, then realized 15 minutes later that I'd forgotten to add all of the extracts. Turned off the heat and added them, turned heat back on high, took another 10 minutes to regain the boil. Added second set of hops at 40min, then continued as planned.

Edit: Learned later that I accidentally employed the Late Extract Addition method.


Fermentation Notes
Original Gravity: 1.072
Original pH: Strongly acidic (according to color of litmus strip, though no actual numbers now that I look at the chart...)

Apparently simply placing the kettle in the fridge to cool does more to warm up your fridge than cool the wort. Placed in the fridge around 2245 10/19 and at 0615 10/20, added a little bit more cold water, about 0.5gl, to get the temp down (still around 80F). Pitched the yeast at 74F, poured from kettle into bucket appx 15 times to aerate. Siphoned off from bucket into 5 x 1gl carboys.

Transferred wort to 5 x 1gl carboys via siphon and hose as follows:
-2x 1gl straight wort (one for control, one intended for dry-hopping in a week).
-1x 1gl wort added to 3 x 2in mesquite chips in carboy
-1x 0.8gl wort added to 0.2gl raw sweet potato juice
-1x 0.9gl wort added to 0.1gl raw carrot juice

Bottles:
A - Control (straight recipe)
B - Dry Hop
C - Carrot
D - Mesquite
E - Sweet Potato

At bottling:
-Major **** up, Group B is dead, accidentally grabbed the sanitizer instead of the corn sugar for priming addition on the Dry Hopped ales. That's a shame. Got the right stuff in the rest of them though.
-Added priming sugar directly to most bottles using more of an estimation than a measurement, we'll see how it turns out. At end of bottling, approximately 3oz of corn sugar had been used.


Tasting Notes
Tasted a bottle after 4 days sitting, definitely needs to rest a bit longer, still very sweet, very heavy, definitely not carbonated. Strangely a lot less hop presence than I was expecting, but we'll see how it finishes out. Definitely alcoholic.

Tasted after 9 days:
-Carrot Ale quite tasty actually, a nice strong ale start with a fresh carrot afterfeel.
-Sweet Potato Ale: definite haze problems and the residual starches add too much harshness to drink much more than a taste. Definitely a learning experience

Gypsy, what did you use for the carrot addition? Carrot juice? Chopped carrots? And how much? I'm thinking of trying a small, 2 gallon batch experiment, a carrot wheat beer.

-1x 0.9gl wort added to 0.1gl raw carrot juice

Click to expand...

Right now I'm sipping a carrot ale. Amazing