Brewed up a batch of beer last night for a company party that I'll keg in about 4 weeks. I should have about a gallon left over for bottles though for personal consumption! Brew day went nice and smooth. I'm trying to increase my mash effeciency so I did a few things to hopefully increase that! Mashed in pretty high at about 155 and held that for an hour. The temp in the mash came down a bit at the 40 minute mark so I added a little bit of boiling water to bring the temp back up to where I wanted. Attention to detail baby! Mashed out and sparged at 168. Should have a nice thick mouth feel! I messed with the Rouge Dead Guy Ale clone recipe from Northern Brewer and hopped it a little more then the actual recipe. I did a First Wort Hop addition to hopefully smooth out the hops in this one. It was my first time with this technique and I'm really excited to see the results. It's not that important in this beer where the malt will be the biggest player, but a fun experiment anyway. Hopefully it will be a nice strong drinkable company picnic beer! I did dilute it a little bit and ended up with about 5.75 gallons which I thought was necessary when I remembered that it was for a work party. Not that bringing it down from 7% to 6% is going to make that much of a difference, but at least I get to bottle a bit for myself! It will most likely be a little bit lighter in color because of this, but smelling it this morning when I checked for airlock activity, it had an amazingly malty smell which I hoped for, and was expecting! Yes!... this shit is going to be tasty!
Learnings: Taste your grains! While putting together the grain bill for this beer last night at Northern Brewer in St. Paul, I did something that I haven't done in the past and I'd highly recommend doing this. Before I grabbed an individual grain to weigh out, I'd take a little bit and taste it, chew it up and really try and get a feel for it. The Munich malt had an amazingly sweet taste that I wasn't expecting! Oh the joy of brewing, and learning!
malt
Original Gravity 1.065
Color 12° SRM / 20° EBC
(Gold to Copper)
hops
yeast
Alcohol 6.1% ABV7.7.10 - Transferred to keg after cold conditioning for a week. Perfectly clear, fantastic smelling, malty beer. It smelled very similar to Dead Guy Ale! Can't wait to carbonate this one up and give it a sample!
7.14.10 - Sampled this with my buddy Kevin. The appearance is a brilliant copper color and crystal clear with a nice fluffy off white three finger head. The clarity had much to do with the PacMan yeast but also I cold conditioned it for a week before kegging. The aroma is mainly of the bready Munich malt. It's a fantastic smelling malty beer, almost like a bier de garde. The taste is once again very grainy and malty, with a medium thickness to the mouthfeel. The bitterness is very nicely balanced, and extremely mellow, yet ever present. I'm assuming this balance comes from the first wort hop addition. My overall impression is that this is a fantastic recipe that produces an amazingly balanced malty mock Maibock. I could easily drink 5 or 6 of these in a row as it so smooth. My co-workers are really going to enjoy this on Sunday!
7.18.10 - Keg went down pretty quick at the company party, it only took about 2 hours. Everyone was going back for more so they must have liked it. It was a perfect beer for a beautiful grill out picnic party! Thanks for drinking it everyone!
Spot on review, the beer was malt-tastic and I wanted 4-5 more, the coworkers are in for a treat, awesome beverage. Certainly lives up to the Dank name!
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