improvised double brewday

This is what happens when the girlfriend leaves me home alone with a bunch of malt for the weekend!

Brewed a brown ale today and got about 2 extra gallons of quality wort. Used it for a PM Porter...thing.

2 gal of Brown ale runnings boiled/caramelized for color
+the last of my malt
+every last speck of malt extract in the house
+Half a pound of grade b maple syrup
+a pound of dried blueberries
Kitchen Sink Colonial Porter?

Hopped it with some leftover tett and mt hood, I'm interested to see how it turns out.

So 5 gallons turned into ten.

Hope you took notes, it will likely be the best beer you've ever heard tell of!, Small beers (and the like) often turn out great.

COLObrewer said:

Hope you took notes, it will likely be the best beer you've ever heard tell of!, Small beers (and the like) often turn out great.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the little digital scale was right there so weighed everything out as it was dumped in. The variable is the boiled down wort- post boiled gravity and volume were not measured. I just let it go until it was thick and dark.

Gordon Strong's Chai Brown Ale (from Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher)

og 1055 - fg 1010 - 19 ibu

This was my first spice beer, mashed to poured in a scant 13 days.



Color is plum and brown, somewhere in the 17-20 srm range. This beer has no haze or sediment cloud. Clarity does shine through the brown beer.

The aroma is there, soft cinnamon, nutmeg and licorice. despite the essential oils of the spices, I'm impressed by the young beer's medium, tan colored head.

First sips are an affirmation. I'm pleased to have made this brew! Slightly thinner body than expected when pouring with pie spice right up front and a tiny hint of hop bitterness at the end. The front end is punchy with cassia and clove. The rest of my swig is very smooth. Overall a soft yet present spice flavor over a somewhat simple marris otter grain bill. Spice overcomes sweetness with ease on the palate.

If I was going to change the process, I might try mashing a bit higher for more malt body. 147 made for a pleasant dry finish that lets the spice shine through, but more body and more spice could easily be done. Also more malty, biscuity grains like victory might be something to look into.

Warms the body, this will be great for those rainy Seattle nights, SWMBO will go nuts for it. Big fan, one of my favorite brews to date. Recommended beer to make!

I know I'm probably the only one reading this thread, but I gotta update...

The kitchen sink beer is pretty good! It's not at all what I planned or expected. I pitched onto a huge cake of Wyeast 3711 that instead of pitching dry yeast on a whim and I'm thankful that I did. What came out was a tasty Belgian Pale Ale...



The yeast's flavor blasts through thanks to the low fg (1.005), you can definitely taste the fermented out sugars but I still wouldn't call the beer cidery or anything like that. I wish that I had more flavor and aroma hops in this beer, but I'm pretty happy with the results!

I'll even post the recipe, not so much for people to brew but more to show that in the end, you'll have beer!

Cheers.

Recipe Type: Partial Mash
Yeast: Wyeast 3711
Yeast Starter: Cake from previous batch
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter: Existing Cake
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.046
Final Gravity: 1.005
IBU: Unknown
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: ~6 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 8 days, 68 F
Additional Fermentation: Bottle Conditioned
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): none
Tasting Notes: Yeast dominates, dry, not malty, needs more flavor hop, surprisingly tasty despite!

2 Gallons wort from previous batch at 1.010 original gravity (I used brown ale runnings but hey, just about anything would work.)
2.5 lbs Amber Malt Extract
.5 lbs Brown Sugar
.5 lbs Maple Syrup
.5 lbs Clover Honey
.5 lbs Trader Joe's Dried Strawberries, Blueberries and currants
Evenly mixed, added continuously in the boil

Hops

60 Min- 1.5 oz Cascade hops, Whole, 6.6 AAU
15 Min- .5 oz Saaz, Whole, 4 AAU
1 Min- .25 oz Mt Hood, Whole, Unmarked AAU

Pitched onto monstrous cake of Wyeast 3711 leftover from just siphoned Saison.



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Inspired by the story of Lagunitas' Brown Shugga, the beer born out of safeway sucrose. After brewing a brown ale I had some weak runnings, all the scrap DME in the house and some pantry items. Sounded like fun .

The results are good. Great platform to let the big dose of flavorful yeast shine through a beer. Carbonated as usual, but feels spritzy-er. Bitterness needs a balance on the hop side. More late hopping would have helped this brew.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that everybody uses weird crap for about half of their fermentables! Don't even feel the need to brew this beer, I really just posted it to hammer the point in the end, you'll have beer to the newbies.