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It's been a very long time since I brewed, but I kind of backed myself into a corner by letting NPL members vote on beers I could brew and saying I'd make three of them for the con in Boston this summer. OK< now it wasn't REALLY meant to be a vote, it was a hidden contest, but there was SO MUCH enthusiasm that I figured I should actually make the top three winners. One of which I'm working on now. It's a doppelbock, and will be my first ever lager. I ordered this termperature control sleeve that takes cool gel backs (of which I have many, thanks to the fine folks at Home Chef. I'' use that for fermentation. And I just ordered a freezer & thermostat which I will set up on the garage for lagering, which I'll do after I bottle.
Complicating this is that when I wrote up the beer descriptions, I wasn't really intending to BREW them, just to create a description that was entertaining and contained the information necessary for the puzzle hidden within. So I'm making a doppelbock using British & German malt, Swiss hops, and - God help me - Pilsner Urquell yeast. To give myself a bit of a break, I"m doing a partial mash. And I'm gearing I pitched the yeast into the starter about 8 pm last night, and so far it's not really doing much of anything. I can't tell if this is standard lager yeast behavior, or if I somehow managed to shock the little Slovaks into dormancy. In any event, I'm mid-sparge and it smells good.
For posterity, this is what's going in it:
3 lbs. 2-row Pale
2 lbs. Munich Cara-pils 1
2 lbs. 20 L Crystal Malt
2.5 lbs dry amber extract
2 lbs. dry pale extract
2.5 oz Tettnanger hops (2.5 AAU), half 45 minutes from end of boil, half 15 minutes from end
1 Whitfloc pellets, 15 minutes from end of boil
ETA: Starting gravity 1.084, so if they yeast are alive, they should be reasonably happy...
ETA (4/10): Good cold break, and the yeast are definitely alive. Now to see if we can maintain temperature in the sleeve I bought...
The other two are both wheat beers & won't require lagering. Eric the Half-a-Weizen will be a grapefruit infused hefeweizen, and Brugghaus Bru is to be brewed "in the Icelandic style" whatever that means.
Actually, by NPL convention, it means brewed in a style that doesn't actually exist, that should be interesting.
Complicating this is that when I wrote up the beer descriptions, I wasn't really intending to BREW them, just to create a description that was entertaining and contained the information necessary for the puzzle hidden within. So I'm making a doppelbock using British & German malt, Swiss hops, and - God help me - Pilsner Urquell yeast. To give myself a bit of a break, I"m doing a partial mash. And I'm gearing I pitched the yeast into the starter about 8 pm last night, and so far it's not really doing much of anything. I can't tell if this is standard lager yeast behavior, or if I somehow managed to shock the little Slovaks into dormancy. In any event, I'm mid-sparge and it smells good.
For posterity, this is what's going in it:
3 lbs. 2-row Pale
2 lbs. Munich Cara-pils 1
2 lbs. 20 L Crystal Malt
2.5 lbs dry amber extract
2 lbs. dry pale extract
2.5 oz Tettnanger hops (2.5 AAU), half 45 minutes from end of boil, half 15 minutes from end
1 Whitfloc pellets, 15 minutes from end of boil
ETA: Starting gravity 1.084, so if they yeast are alive, they should be reasonably happy...
ETA (4/10): Good cold break, and the yeast are definitely alive. Now to see if we can maintain temperature in the sleeve I bought...
The other two are both wheat beers & won't require lagering. Eric the Half-a-Weizen will be a grapefruit infused hefeweizen, and Brugghaus Bru is to be brewed "in the Icelandic style" whatever that means.
Actually, by NPL convention, it means brewed in a style that doesn't actually exist, that should be interesting.
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