I just wanted to update this thread today...
Saturday night I emailed the brewery, asking several different beer geek questions, hoping to get the beer as close as possible (brewing it Wednesday)
This morning, I got the following e-mail from Tallgrass' Head Brewer:
Hi Michael,
Congratulations on winning the Tallgrass Homebrew kit! I’ve been forwarded some questions that you have for the Oasis Kit.
1.) Water Chemistry: The water here at the brewery is pretty hard. What we end up doing with the brewing water is just carbon filtering it. That’s usually it. We then adjusts our ph in the Mash Tun with Lactic Acid to the spec for the chosen product. Our spec for Oasis is a mash ph of 5.10-5.35.
2.) Aeration: What we do here @ TG is use pure oxygen after knockout and before the pitch of the yeast. We use a pretty decent amount of oxygen because of the gravity of Oasis. I also use pure oxygen in my homebrew batches as well. I’ve never had a problem with it. It’s good stuff!
3.) Cell count: With Oasis we put a pretty solid amount of yeast into the beer. We put in 1,315,000,000 cells per gram. Or 1,000,000 cells per ML @ 17*P
4.) Fermentation Temperature: We ferment most of our beers at 67*F. The ones that we do are Oasis, IPA, Buffalo Sweat, and Ale. We ferment Halcyon @ 70*F, and Rooster for the first 24 hours will ferment at 68 and then get bumped up to 72*F to finish out fermentation.
5.) Aging times: What I would do is ferment it and leave it in the carboy for 3 weeks. Maybe the last week what I would do is take and put it in a slightly warmer climate. What you’re going to want to do is a Diacetyl Rest. You’re going to want to insure that there is none on this beer. Dry hop it for about 4 days. We end up usually with a shorter dry hopping time than most breweries. Other breweries will dry hop beers for 6-10 days. I’m all about a longer dry hop. This beer is a bit different. We want a huge amount of hops in the nose, but also a well rounded malt character.
Congrats again on winning the homebrew contest. Hopefully some of this information will help you in brewing a great beer.
Cheers!
Andrew Hood
Head Brewer
Tallgrass Brewing Company
8845 Quail Lane, Suite 1
Manhattan, Kansas 66502
O: 785.537.1131
F: 785.537.1150
[email protected]
www.tallgrassbeer.com
Follow us daily at
www.Twitter.com/tallgrassbeer
I just thought that it was so great that they got back to me so promptly, and with such detailed information. It's that type of customer service that wins over life-long fans and warrants good will in the homebrewing community!
