Hopville.com

I found a website called hopville.com that looks pretty cool. I went ahead and added all my recipes to the site to share with others and hopefully get some good feedback. My profile is here. I have a new recipe that I came up with yesterday on there, I wont post it here till I am ready to brew it though.

Belgian IPA

I have been wanting to do a Belgian for a while now and I figure that I would do that after my Oatmeal Coffee Stout. Well I've decided to go ahead and do the Belgian anyway then do the Oatmeal Coffee Stout since I just did a Stout last week. So I crafted up a recipe over the last few days. The bad part was trying to find which hops to use. I decided to use my 2 favorite hops in the world Cascade and Simcoe. The trouble was finding the simcoe hops since there is such a shortage and the usual places are out of it and will be for a while. I did manage to find some at Austin Homebrew Supply, so I picked up 3oz of simcoe and 6oz of cascade. I am still trying to figure out which yeast to get, but I will know more in the coming week. Here is the recipe as it stands right now.

Belgian IPA

Grains:
12 lbs: Belgian Pilsner
4 lbs: Belgian 2-Row Pale
1 lbs: Belgian Aromatic
1 lb: Belgian Candy Sugar added to boil at 25min
.5 lb: Belgian Biscuit
.5 lb: Carapils

Hops:
1 oz: Cascade 6.0aa Mash
1 oz: Cascade 6.0aa First Wort Hops
1 oz: Simcoe 11.9aa 60 min
1.25 oz Various Hops ??aa 45min (EKG, Fuggles, Cascade)
1 oz: Cascade 6.0aa 30 min
1 oz: Simcoe 11.9aa 20 min
1.25 oz Various Hops ??aa 15min (EKG, Fuggles, Cascade)
1 oz: Cascade 6.0aa 10 min
1 oz: Cascade 6.0aa 5 Min
1 oz: Cascade 6.0aa DH
1 oz: Simcoe 11.9aa DH

OG: 1.092
FG: 1.026

ABV: 8.7

ABW: 6.93


Yeast: Wyeast Trappist High Gravity (3787)



Update 11.15.2008: Brew day. Day went very well, I missed my target OG by more than I wanted but thats fine. Hopefully my efficiency will get better over time. Hopefully the 1/2 gallon yeast starter that I made will kick in in a few hours.

Update 11.17.2008: 2 Days after brew day and the beer is fermenting like crazy. This is the most active fermentation I have ever seen. I am glad I have a blow off tube on this one cause a ton of nasties/yeast/hops/beer is spewing out. Hopefully the gravity can get low real low like around 1.020 or lower, we will see in a few weeks.

Update 12.1.2008: 2 Weeks after brew day I have racked to secondary. Took a gravity of 1.030 which I hope I can get it to drop with a month stay in secondary to 1.025 or lower. I put in 1.0 ounces of cascade for 1 week then I may or may not add 1.0 ounce of simcoe for another week in the last week of secondary.

Update 12.15.2008: 2 Weeks after a move to secondary I looked at the OG and it has dropped some but not enough.  The OG is now at 1.026 and I think it can drop further if I let it sit a while.  As for a taste, it's hard to say.  You get a nice cascade hop aroma, but the taste is something I have never tasted before.  So we will see in another few weeks what it is doing.

Update 1.2.2009: Final gravity taken and it's the same as before.  So I am going to bottle it this weekend.  At 1.026 that puts the final ABV at 8.66%.  I was looking at something more around 9, but it will have to do.  The taste was really good.  I don't really anything Belgian from the beer, just a very bitter citrus hop flavor and aroma.  Maybe some bottle aging will help that out.

Update 1.4.2008; Bottled today and I tried to use as little sugar as I could thinking that once the sugar was added it would start to ferment again.  I was right, so you can see in all the bottles that there is some carbonation and yeast forming in the bottom.

Chocolate Mint Imperial Stout

Tomorrow I will brew up a batch of chocolate mint stout. I got the idea from the wonderful book Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher. I didn't use the recipe out of the book, but just made up my own version. If it turns out good which hopefully it will it will be like drinking a chocolate shake with a hint of mint as it goes down. So hopefully I will post updates with pictures and how things are coming along with the fermentation sometime this weekend.

Chocolate Mint Imperial Stout

Malt:
15 lbs: Marris Otter
1 lb: Roasted Barley
.5 lb: Chocolate Malt
.5 lb: American 80L Malt
.25 lb: Black Patent

Other:
1/2 cup: Cocoa Powder at 20 min
1 1/2 Altoids at end of boil
1 oz: Chinese Mint Leaves at end of boil

Hops:
1.0 oz: Target 10aa 60 min
1.0 oz: Willamette 5.5aa 30 min (Whole Leaf)
.5 oz: Target 10aa 15 min
.5 oz: Willamette 5.5aa 10 min (Whole Leaf)

Yeast:
White Labs WLP013 London Ale Yeast

OG: 1.060
FG: 1.032
ABV: 3.7 %
ABW: 2.9%

Update 10.11.2008: My efficiency was kind off today. I need to invest in a emerson chiller cause I had to use ice to cool down the wort, so the og suffered. Anyway we will see what happens, it tasted really good. A nice chocolate taste with a mint backbone.

Update 10.20.2008: Moved to secondary to sit for a while I think. The gravity was only down to 1.030, which is way too high. I think a nice long sit in secondary will bring that down. Tasting it was nice, heavy on the chocolate and light on the mint.

Update 11.24.2008: Bottled the beer tonight and spite the fact that I missed my final gravity by a ton. Oh well the beer tastes of sweet chocolate with a mild aftertaste of mint. So in a few weeks we will see how well it has carbonated.