New Old guy from NH

[FredW]

I'm just returning from a multiple year hiatus from homebrewing. I've had several other hobbies taking up all of my time, but this winter things have been considerably slower, and my 25 y/o son has got me re-energized.

Back in October we dusted off all of the old gear. I'm an all grain brewer and have a 10 gallon set up with a home made (Rodney Morris inspired) RIMS system w/ rectangular picnic cooler slotted copper manifold mash / lauter tun and and 1/2 barrel keg for a kettle.

I found that we had enough old (I mean like 5 years old!!) ingredients laying around to slap together an IPA.

Old Leftovers IPA
5 gallons

12 lbs Munton's 2 row
1 lb 60L crystal

And an eclectic mix of cheesy old hops:
1 oz Northern brewers 60 min
1 oz UK Progress 60 min
1 oz Kent Goldings 60 min
1 oz Fuggles 20 min
1 oz Saaz 5 min
1 oz Hallertaur 5 min

Wyeast American Ale (fresh)

Kegged the results and was completely surprised that it tasted reasonably good. I think the hops had lost a lot of their oomph due to age even though they were stored in my freezer, so it wasn't as hoppy as the recipe would indicate (also why I did not indicate the AA%'s), but the other than slightly low extraction rate, the malt worked fine and tasted great.


We've since brewed up a delectable Brown Porter (named "Peter"), which is currently on tap in the beer fridge, and last weekend we brewed up a Maibock / Helles, which is happily bubbling away in the 50 degree cellar right now.


"Back in the Saddle" Maibock
5.5 gallons

10 lbs 2-row malt
4 lbs Munich malt

1 oz. Perle 7.9% 60 min
1 oz Hallertaur 3% 10 min

Wyeast Bavarian lager yeast

Managed to get an OG of 1.074, which is good efficiency for my setup (>80%). Yeast took a while to get going, but we didn't use a starter. I'll let you know how this one comes out.

Next up will be a nice big Dopplebock: Der Terminator (I'll be Bock!)
Gotta get some more mileage out of that 'spensive lager yeast.

 

[Warped04]

Welcome to the forums and Grats on getting back into it. Yeah, your hops will have detoriated, but you can save them for a belgian or a sour beer.

 

[Greyhound]

Welcome back.

 

[FredW]

Welcome to the forums and Grats on getting back into it. Yeah, your hops will have detoriated, but you can save them for a belgian or a sour beer.

Too late for that. I used them all in that IPA. Funny thing was, even though they smelled a bit cheesy in the bags when opened, there was no hint of that in the final brew. That brew was just a chance to get the cobwebs out and get beck in the brew groove, as well as getting rid of those questionable ingredients. The only question remaining was, why did I wait so long?

Thanks for the welcomes.

 

[Fogline]

Welcome back
I just started brewing again about 9 months ago I would have never stopped if I had they had something like HBT 20 years ago. and good yeast

 

[FredW]

Good point about the yeast. When we brewed batch #002 (I'm prefacing all the renaissance beers with #00 to differentiate them from the first 80 batches I brewed) I was very surprised how well the new (to me) Wyeast ready to pitch slap packs worked. Bought a fresh (date stamp) pack. Slapped it and it was fully puffed in 3 hours. Pitched it directly into the wort and it was bubbling in 6 hours, at high krausen within 12 hours. That sure beats the heck out of making starters, even in the microwave. My son has also reported very good results directly pitching the White Labs vials.