Pour Some Belgian On Me

It's been a long time since I've brewed, but I'm making up for it. Two brews were done today. One a Belgian Dark Strong and the other...well, I'll get to that one later.

The local homebrew club I belong to (Bexar Brewers) is planning on putting a Belgian Dark Strong into a bourbon barrel.. As you may have guessed, this particular brew I'm brewing is going into the bourbon barrel.

The brewclub is going by a specific recipe, so the gravity and IBUs on this have to be pretty spot on. There really isn't a whole lot of room for error.

Enter brother Murphy. You may have heard of him.He's that rogue Belgian monk that loves to mess with what the other monks are brewing. He takes particular glee when there are home brewers around.

I follow the recipe like I normally do and then take a reading on the gravity just prior to the boil.  Darn it, it was too low. I add some dry malt extract. Damn. It was still to low. More malt extract, still to low. Panic sets in. The local homebrew store is closed. I had a full blown homebrew emergency on my hands. Then I remember, don't monks like to use sugar in their beer? Thankfully, I had some extra brown sugar to use in the recipe. All is saved for the Belgium Dark Strong. Huzzah!

Remember folks. This was a two brew day. I still had the small beer to contend with.

For the small beer I  planned on using dry malt extract in addition to the second runnings from the first beer, but I has already used all the dry malt extract for the Belgian Dark Strong. For those of you who have ever made some form of soup from whatever you had laying around in your pantry you may find this next part interesting.

I still needed sugar to get my gravity up on the small beer. I scavenged the pantry for whatever was left. I found honey, light brown sugar, dark brown sugar and maple syrup. I didn't measure anything. I just keep putting stuff in until, get this, I think the raw wort tastes right. I throw in leftover hops from the last couple of brews for bittering and flavor. We'll see what this mystery beer tastes like in a few weeks.

Truly exhausted from a extra long brew day, I go to bed smelling of wort and dreaming of a river of bourbon barrel Belgian beer.

Beer Nerd Stuff: 

Beer Style: Belgian Dark Strong Ale

Batch Size: 5.5 Gallons

Grains and Sugars:

• 1.75 lb       Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)
• 11.00 lb      Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
• 5.00 lb       Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
• 0.75 lb       Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM)
• 0.25 lb       Carafa II (412.0 SRM)
• 2.25 lb       Brown Sugar, Dark (50.0 SRM)

Hops

• 1.00 oz       Northern Brewer [10.60 %]  (60 min)
• 0.75 oz       Styrian Goldings [3.50 %]  (20 min)
• 0.25 oz       Styrian Goldings [3.50 %]  (10 min)      
  

Yeast:

• 
  
  
  

  1 Pkgs        Belgian Ale (White Labs #WLP550)

Mash Type:

• Double Infusion, Full Body
  

OG:

• 1.095 SG

The Brew Day That Went Boom!

(Got it all together, don't you, baby)
Murphy's Law, sure out to get you
(Got it all together, don't you, baby)
Murphy's Law, sure out to get you

Cheri - Murphy's Law

Murphy's law was in full effect on this brew day.

It started with water and ended with a, "Big bada boom!"

After having a successful double brew day last week I thought I'd tempt fate and try to do it again.

I needed to get two simple things to get this brew day started. Water and invert sugar.

"Yo, homeboy! You must be kidding." - MC Hammer

Invert sugar. What diabolical bastard invented invert sugar! I looked everywhere. Three different grocery stores, foreign food aisles, asking little old ladies...nothing. 1 1/2 hours in my journey I gave up and decided to get plain old cane sugar syrup.

Ha!

I had even worse luck finding the cane syrup. Oh, I found it alright. It was $4.50 for 11 ounces of the stuff. Imported no less.I needed two pounds. I finally just called the Mrs and asked her to look up a recipe for cane syrup.

Finally, one last stop. Two five gallons jugs of water from the Glacier water machine. You might see where this one is going.

Yeap, it was out of order.

After traveling another five miles I found another water machine. Two hours (in what was supposed to be a 30 minute trip) I headed home.

Okay, It's only 1PM. I still might manage to salvage this day and get two brews in.

I make my way back into my brew storage room (the room formally known as our game room.) I started moving stuff around and noticed there was a good deal of glass on the bottom of one the shelves.

At this point I would like to say I, "Had a Coke and a smile." I can't say that. This is because most of my homemade cola had decided to go ballistic the night before. Glass was everywhere. Despite the cola being in an enclosed plastic container shreds of glass had rocketed to the other side of the room. The explosion even blew a half dollar size hole into the side of the container.

I cleaned up all the glass and gently move the plastic container where the rest of the cola bottles that didn't explode to the garage.

There were still about 8 cola bottles that had decided it was not their time to explode. I knew I had to relieve the pressure on the bottles. Since they didn't explode, I figured it would be reasonably safe to open the bottles with a bottle opener.

Note to self. Bottle bombs will always and forever be bottle bombs.

I popped the top of the first bottle. It was like a shotgun going off. Shards of glass and the bottle top zoomed by my head. I sat down for a couple of minutes. I could have have been killed by cola. The headline would have read, "Man killed by yeast, water and sugar. Film at 11."

I covered the top of the container and very gently moved the whole thing outdoors. I tried to detonate the cola over a distance by tossing it on the concrete, but all that did was create even more shrapnel. Over the course of the next hour the Mrs and I became a miniature bomb squad. We filled up a plastic tub with water and opened the bottles one by one in the tub. I used a metal pan as a shield over the tub just in case one the bottles got airborne. Since the Mrs had leather gloves she became the detonation expert.

I cleaned up the remaining mess and finally got on with the brew day.

I learned a few valuable lessons today:

• Sugar, water and yeast are dangerous when not used in the right proportion.
• Stick to plastic when making soda. I know it's not environmentally friendly, but in the end you'll live longer.
• Listen to your wife when she asks you to not make any more soda in glass bottles.

Beer Nerd Stuff: 

Beer Style: Southern English Brown Ale #2

Batch Size: 5.0 Gallons

Grains:

• 5.50 lb       Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
• 1.33 lb       Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)
• 0.66 lb       Corn, Flaked (1.3 SRM)
• 0.40 lb       Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM)
• 0.84 lb       Turbinado (10.0 SRM)

Hops

• 1.00 oz       Fuggles [4.00 %]  (60 min)

Yeast:

• 1 Pkgs        London Ale (Wyeast Labs #1028)

Mash Type:

• Single Infusion, Full Body
  

OG:

• 1.044 SG

Double Brew Day

It's been a whole two weeks since my last brew. Time to catch up if I plan on still hitting 52 brews in one year. It's a good thing I was already one ahead of schedule. Time to rock and roll.

Beer Nerd Stuff: 

Beer Style: Southern English Brown Ale

Batch Size: 6.0 Gallons

Grains:

• 7.00 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
• 0.69 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)
• 0.31 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -150L (150.0 SRM)
• 0.25 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)
• 0.13 lb Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM)

Hops

• 1.00 oz Fuggles [4.00 %] (60 min))

Yeast:

• English Ale (White Labs #WLP002)

Mash Type:

• Single Infusion, Full Body
  

OG:

• 1.036 SG

Beer Style: Standard/Ordinary Bitter

Batch Size: 6.0 Gallons

Grains:

• 6.38 lb Maris Otter (Crisp) (4.0 SRM)
• 0.81 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM)
• 0.31 lb Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM)

Hops

• 1.00 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (60 min)
• 1.00 oz Fuggles [4.00 %] (20 min)

Yeast:

• English Ale (White Labs #WLP002)

Mash Type:

• Single Infusion, Full Body
  

OG:

• 1.039 SG