the may brewclub comp is for SMSH beers (single malt, single hop). yesterday I made an english-style bitter using gambrinus esb malt, glacier hops, and wy1028 london ale yeast. I've used the esb malt a couple times to brew my oldboy esb recipe, it's similar to maris otter in the the chewy/malty/toasty/nutty way. I'm also a big fan of glacier hops which I think gives a nice spicy orange marmalade kind of flavor with some smooth bitterness. The wy1028 was actually picked up by mistake- I meant to get london esb, not london ale- but oh well, I've never used the 1028 before and I'm interested to see what they mean by "rich, mineral profile."


 I also did a single decoction for this batch which is a little unusual. after my hour mash at 152f, I pulled about 6-7qts of the thick mash out of the mash tun and boiled it on the stove for 30min. this is a single malt beer, so I was hoping to caramelize the pale malt for color and a little more flavor complexity. after boiling the thick mash, I added it back to the mash tun, bringing the whole thing up to mashout temp. then, I recirculated and sparged as usual.
 this is the first runnings without the decoction
 this is the liquid from the decocted mash. it definitely picked up some color. the grains really softened up and gelatinized through this process. it also increased my efficiency too, my og ended up at 1.058 instead of 1.050.
 you can see the color I picked up through the decoction. I would say my srm is closer to 10 than the 5-6 that was calculated. so, that worked. we'll have to give it a few weeks to check the flavor contributions.
still working out some of the kinks in the brew stand, but it's been doing a little work.

-kris

a couple weeks ago, I scored some raw apple cider on the cheap from farnsworth cider mill which is a few blocks from my house. so, of course, I decided to ferment 5 gallons of it.
 I started by mixing the cider with 4lbs. of light brown sugar and dosed with campden tablets for about 36hrs to kill off any wild yeast.
 I made a starter of the wyeast cider using some light dme and part of the raw cider along with a bunch of yeast nutrient and energizer.
after the campdem tabs had time to work and settle out, I aerated the must and pitched the cider yeast. after a week in primary, the gravity had dropped to around 1.000, so I moved to secondary and let it give my berlinerweisse some company in one of the warmer rooms in the house.

-kris

Made a few meads today.

2 Gallons of Grape - OG 1.074
1 Gallon of White Grape Cherry - OG 1.084

-bake

The original starter of ec-1118 yeast wasn't working after a week so I pitched a slurry of 1056 yeast from our latest batch of Kimosabe. I forgot about this for a few weeks, low and behold took a gravity reading tonight, it was down to 1.020 (OG 1.074), around 7.1% abv. I'm a little worried this will be too sweet so I tossed in a little more yeast slurry, 2 cans of cranberry juice and a cinnamon stick. Experiment!

The grape mead "Purple Drank" I made a while ago turned out awesome. So when i saw some apple juice the other day on clearance I picked up (8) 89oz jugs for $0.99 ea. Later when I got home I realized it had Potassium Sorbate and Sodium Benzoate, both are preservatives that don't play well with yeast production. I did some reading online, others say that if you make a starter it should still ferment out. I juiced 4 apples, tossed in some yeast nutrient, and a pack of lalvin EC-1118. Tomorrow ill either add a little more apple juice to double the starter or ill toss it in the 5 gallons of apple juice, along with 3lbs of brown sugar.

-bake