Thirsty Mallard Brewing Blog

Well, not too much to report on the brewing front, but I figured I would update anyways. 

 Yesterday I kegged my small batch of Belgian Pale Ale.  This batch was thrown together for the hell of it… and screwed up because I’m an idiot.  I had a number input incorrectly in BeerSmith so I used a little too much water.  I was shooting for an OG in the 1.060’s and ended up in the low 1.040’s.  I decided to add some corn sugar at day 3 of fermentation to up the alcohol.  According to my calculations, I should have brought it up to the mid 1.050’s.  It didn’t taste all that special at kegging, so I’m hoping some time and carbonation help it out.  I may end up dumping it…

I’ve been rather lax in my brewing and brewing practices lately, but I attribute that to not having a proper brewing location or setup.  As soon as I get my new house and can get all my brew gear organized, I really want to try and dial in and fix alot of the problems I have been noticing lately.  So having said that, I decided I’m not brewing until I get into the new house (hopefully I can have my inagural brew in early November).

What else… oh, my hops weren’t growing well at all, so when hurricane Ike came in, I decided that deconstructing the trellace and cancelling the hop growing project was prudent.  So, no more homegrown hops.

That’s all for now…

Cheers!

I haven’t been doing well in competitions lately, and it’s really starting to drain my confidence and irritate me. I like my beer, my friends (including homebrewers) like my beer, my family likes my beer… the only people that don’t seem to like my beer are beer judges.

In my most recent competition, the Lunar Rendezbrew, My weizenbock scored a 23, my Scottish 80/- got a 26, my Wee Heavy (that I am pretty damn proud of) got a 28, and my Scottish 70/- got a 32 (my only decent score).

In looking through my scoresheets, I had some major deductions, but almost nothing to tell me what was wrong. For example, my weizenbock got 8 out of 20 on flavor and all the judge wrote was “Some malt and bread with hints of bock.” WHAT WAS WRONG THAT YOU TOOK OF 12 POINTS??? I’m fairly confident that malt, bread and bock flavors are acceptable in a weizenbock…

Here’s another gem… my Scottish 70/- ale had 3 scoresheets. In the Aroma column, Judge #1 wrote, “Good malt aroma”, judge #2 wrote, “Slight malt aroma”, and Judge #3 wrote, “Almost no malt aroma.” WTF?!?!

When I enter competitions I don’t expect to medal every time. Half the reason I enter is for feedback. Instead I get this load of useless crap.

I’m done wasting homebrew on competitions…

I know I’ve been neglecting to update my blog and my site as much as I should.  Shame on me. 

 Ok, so the update on a few things…

The wedding beers were a pretty good success.  The German Amber Lager from the CIA Club brew-in was a BIG hit.  I think I will definitely be doing that one again.  The Cream Ale was good, but a little grassier than most BMC drinkers would like.  My cousin loved it.  The English Ale was waaaaay to English to be enjoyable for most (even me).  I think it needs a month or so to age some of the esters out.  It’s not bad, it’s just really young.

Next, I entered 4 beers into the Lunar Rendezbrew.  Among them was my Wee Heavy which I am pretty proud of.  I swear to everything I hold holy, if I get low scores in this competition, I’m done with competitions for a while.  After my weizenbock scored low at the Big Batch Brew Bash, I got pretty distraught. 

On the brew front, I have the ingredients for 2.5 gallons of a nice Belgian/American Pale (a Belgian Pale made with American hops).  And this weekend I need to brew some Scottish 70/- for a competition I am in.

Ok, that’s all for now.  I’m swear I’m going to update my What’s On Tap page of my website any day now.  I have to do it from work and I just keep forgetting.  If you really want to know, feel free to drop me a line and ask!

Oh, one last thing… a few local people that have found my website have been contacting me, which is awesome!  Hopefully one day I will have a few more local brewers to spend a brew day with!

Cheers!

With my wedding looming on the horizon and with plenty of family due in town in about 4 weeks, I needed to make sure all my kegs were full of some good beer that non-beer geeks would appreciate (my family is a bunch of Bud Light drinkers).

 So I decided to brew an Ordinary Bitter and a Cream Ale.  Here are my recipies:

It’s Not Ordinary Or Bitter (All Grain)
5.5 Gallons - 60 Min. Boil
Grain:
9.5 Lbs. - Maris Otter
0.5 Lb. - Aromatic Malt (20L)
0.5 Lb. - Crystal 120
0.25 Lb. - Special Roast (50L)
Hops:
1.2 oz. - East Kent Goldings - 4.8%AA - 60 min.
0.5 oz. - EKG - 4.8% AA - 20 min.
0.3 oz. - EKG - 4.8% AA - 1 min.
Yeast:
White Labs WLP002 - English Ale

And the Cream Ale:

Cream Ale (Extract)
5 Gallons, 60 Min Boil
Extract:
6.6 lbs - Pale LME
Hops:
1.0 oz. - Liberty - 4.3%AA - 60 Min.
0.5 oz. - Liberty - 4.3%AA - 1 Min.
Yeast:
White Labs WLP001 - California Ale

I think both of those beer are tame enough that everyone should enjoy them.  I’ll save brewing up an IPA or RIS for some other time!

Prost!

So on Saturday I dropped off beer and entered in the annual Big Batch Brew Bash.  This year’s style was Weizenbock, and I think I made a KILLER one!  I will probably enter this beer into one more competition and then jelously guard the rest! 

The only problem I can forsee is that it was undercarbonated when I bottled it (I forgot to connect CO2 early enough).

This Sunday is the BBBB (5/18) and I will be attending for the fun and festivities.  I hope to make it to the second round at least, but it would be something to win it!  If I did,, I would get to brew my recipe on a large scale with Saint Arnold Brewing Company and the beer would be released and sold to the public as one of their special releases!

Like I said, I just hope to make it to the second round and I would be happy.  Either way, wish me luck!  If you want to try a pint, come on over!

So I joined the local homebrew club (CIA - Cane Island Alers) this last weekend for a big brew and thought I would share my experience.

We decided to brew 30 gallons of dopplebock (~1.098 OG) and 20 gallons of traditional bock from later runnings (ended up low… 1.053 OG). The fun part was that we did this the only really good way to do a dopplebock… TRIPLE DECOCTION!

We started at about 5:15AM crushing the grain and mashing in for our protien rest. Then we pulled out a third of the mash and brought it to a kettle to raise temp. Well… about 5 hours later we were just reaching boiling for our FIRST decoction. Eventually got it boiling, then added it back. Did I mention we took turns stirring the heated mash. For 5 hours…

Ok, second decoction, we decide to split it up into 3 pots. Worked much better. Only about an hour or so.

Third decoction, same thing.

Add back to mash… rest at sacc rest temps… alright, let’s sparge… uh oh, stuck sparge.

We finally got it going at a trickle, but at that point we just let it trickle away. I think it was 2 or 3 hours later we had collected about 25 gallons. So we started boiling while more ran off.

We boiled and transferred and all was well after that (aside from the low OG of the traditional). I got home at about 1:00AM.

Lesson learned? Probably will never want to do another big batch triple decoction ever again.

Alright, I forgot to post about last weekend since I brewed on Saturday.  I brewed up a beer for an exchange with some forums members on The Brewing Network forms, so this beer is officially dubbed my TBN Army Brew.  So here is the recipe (its a Scottish 70/-):

TBN Army Brew
5.5 Gallons
OG - 1.040
 
8 Lbs. - Maris Otter
0.25 Lb - Roasted Barley (625L)

0.6 oz - Willamette - 5.5%AA - 60 Min

WLP 028 - Edinburgh Ale (Fermenting at 65F)]
Everything went well for this beer, so I expect good things.  Once it is ready I am going to have a few bottled and sent to various other members of the TBN Army, and maybe a few to The Brewing Network studios.  I’ll update with how that goes when I get there.  The rest is getting kegged and probably taken out to Frontier Feista this year.

Speaking of Fiesta, I was supposed to brew an amber ale THIS weekend, but alas work needed to be done and my dad needed help… so looks like I will have to pull double duty next week and do two batches.  The second batch is going to be that Weizenbock for the Big Batch Brew Bash that I mentioned in earlier posts.

Other than that, I went to the Cane Island Aler’s meeting yesterday and had some great beers!  It’s always great to get with fellow homebrewers and drink and discuss good beer and homebrew.  I also had my first sour beer… and it was awesome!  I can see why people say they get hooked on them.  I am going to have to look into brewing one soon…

Well, that’s all for now… I have to get back to work.

Cheers!
Jeff

Due to some housework I had to help my dad with last weekend, I wasn’t able to brew… so I decided that on Monday I would brew rather than go to the gym!

I am going to be making a Weizenbock for the upcoming Big Batch Brew Bash, so I wanted to have a starter batch of Wheat Ale to use the yeast slurry for the Weizenbock… so I decided to make a heffe, and while I was at it, I decided to do my first fruit ale!  (Side note:  One can of Oregon Puree cost me about $17… that’s an extra $34 to add Raspberries… ouch.)

Ok, so I decided to do extract since it would be easier… and it was.  Some boiling water and 6.86 lbs of extract later, I was cooking up some beer!  Everything came out perfectly and I only had a 5 hour brew day… so can’t complain!  As of Tuesday it was happily fermenting along.

 I also decided to go ahead and keg the mysterious IDK Ale.  I was a bit afraid… but it wasn’t bad at all!  I really enjoyed it actually!  The malt was definitely complex and the hops were prominent, but right on!  I think this is definitely going to be a Brewer’s Reserve that I don’t put on a main tap!  I may try it in competition, but I have no idea what category to enter it.  It’s bitter like an APA or IPA, but I don’t think there is enough hop complexity or aroma to do well.

I am going to sit down with a pint this weekend (after it is carbonated) with the BJCP guidelines in front of me and see what i think. 

 All in all, I’m pretty happy with the outcome!

 Until next time… Cheers!

So today I brewed up a batch of Scottish 80/-.  I originally intended to brew the recipe for Scottish 80/- found in Brewing Classic Styles, but due to malt shortages at the local homebrew shop, I had to make some adjustments.  Here it is:

Quackenshire Ale
5.75 Gallons, 90 Minute Boil
OG: 1.068
IBUs: 19.6

Grain:
8.8 lbs. - Maris Otter
1.0 lb. - Caramunich (45L)
0.5 lb. - Caravienne
0.5 lb. - Munich Malt (9 L)
0.38 lb - Crystal 120L
0.12 lb - Chocolate Malt (450L)

Hops:
1.0 oz - EK Goldings - 5% AA - 60 min.
0.3 oz. - Mt. Hood - 4.5% AA - 60 min.

Yeast:  Yeast Slurry of White Labs WLP001 - California Ale - Ferment at 65F.
————————————-
Ok, first off, the 0.3 oz of Mt. Hood are in there just because I had some and I wanted to up my IBUs a bit.   Also, I reused the yeast from the Fourth Quarter Porter I brewed a few weeks ago, so that should get that high OG taken care of.

Speaking of the 4th Quarter Porter, I transfered it to a keg today and it looks and tastes great!  It still needs to carbonate and age a bit, so it is hard to tell exactly how it will end up, but so far I think I would have preferred more body.  It did ferment down to about 1.010 which is a few points lower than what I would have preferred, but at least it will be a good drinking beer!

As for something fun… I was walking through the garage while brewing when I came across a “Make Your Own Beer” kit that had made its way to my shelf.  I opened it out of curiosity and found some liquid male extract and hops… so I decided to take those ingredients and whatever else I could find and make a kitchen sink ale. 

I ended up putting in what was in the kit (some amber malt extract and some light malt extract), two pounds of light dry malt extract I had, some dextrose, some mollasses… and about 2.5 gallons of water.  I added an ounce of Columbus hops that I had in my freezer and boiled for 60 minutes.  At flame-out I thre in some Mt. Hood for aroma, again, just because I had them lying around. 

After I cooled it, I had about 2 gallons at an OG of 1.110!  I added about one and a quarter gallons of water to get the OG down to the high 50’s and pitched a few packets of dry ale yeast I had (one from the kit).

 We will see what happens!  Either it will be terrible, or great, or not.  Either way, it should be interesting!  Since I don’t know what it is or will become, I was going to call it Uhhh… Ale, but my fiance suggested a spin on the IPA and calling it an IDK (I Dont Know) Ale! 

So the 2008 brew-season is finally upon me!  I made a porter and everything went perfectly.  I even hit every number EXACTLY!  Now THAT’S a good way to start the ‘08 brewing season!  Here is the recipe (its from the Dec. 07 BYO)

Fourth Quarter Porter
Est OG - 1.044
Est FG - 1.009

Grain:
4.0 lbs - 2-Row
3.0 lbs - Munich 10L (I am using 6L)
0.5 lb - Crystal 40
6 oz - Chocolate Malt
2 oz - Black Patent
1 oz - Roast Barley 500L
0.75 lbs - Cane Sugar - 15 minutes

Hops:
1.6 oz - Willamette - 5% - 60 min

Yeast: Cal Ale

Mash: 149F for 60 min.

 ———–

 I look forward to having another easy drinking dark beer on tap.  My Scottish 75/- is a hit with everyone who tries it so I am running out of beer faster these days!

Cheers and here’s to a brewing up a great 2008!