Yuma Brewers

House O Beer, By Roxanne

To kick the evening off, DJ dropped by to discuss his latest business venture, Meals in Minutes. Or, maybe Seven-Minute Meals - I’m not sure, I wandered away before the conversation was finished. (Matt says it’s still Meals in Minutes).

Then, Hitesman came over, and the brewing began. Tonight, we, or more accurately, they, made an extra pale ale, which happens to be my personal favorite. Rock on, boys!

They also cleaned some stuff, finished off the Irish Draught and kegged Nick’s Cream Ale (which sounds a little dirty). They decided to not keg the dunkle (uncle? I’m not really sure) since Bart wasn’t here and there were no kegs available anyway.

After much debate, and vows to keep brewing into the summer, they ordered a raspberry wheat, for which they only plan to use half the raspberry extract. Maybe they should call it rasp whe. At any rate, I seem to think this was my sister’s favorite. She should come visit to help us drink it…

Participants included Chuck, Samantha, DJ, Jason, Matt and Rox.

Jason, have fun at David Gilmore!

Oops! No one remembered to order a new batch for this week! It was supposed to be a pale ale but with no ingredients we just did some racking and a bit of work on freeing up keg space! Read the rest of this entry »

After the 2AM finsih on the Chcolate porter we were up for a quick easy kit the next week. And with new guy Bart wanting to get in on this we let him choose. He’s got a taste for Wheat beers and so the Northern Brewer Dunkelweizen recipie was chosen.

This week was a split however. The County fair was in town and it was Demo Derby night. So half the group (Matt, DJ, J, Rox) went to the derby while I stayed behind with Tommy, and Nick to get the brew started. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, we’ve been slacking on posting udates.  I’m back dating these posts to match when the events happened…but I’m going from memory.  So I’m hoping others will chime in with comments to fill in the gaps!

This is one of the reasons I brew each year…a chance to try the same basic recipie in different ways.  I’ve done a chocolate porter every year I brew and it’s usually very popular.  Last year it wasn’t.  So this year I’m determined to do it better than ever with our first partial mash.

The recipie was basicially Slanting Annies from Homebrewers companion, just the particulars of malts and yeast were customized.  The order from northern brewer was:

• 2lbs. Rahr 2-Row Pale
• 3lbs. Briess Caramel 60L
• 3lbs. Durst Wheat
• 1lb. Simpsons Black Malt
• 1lb. Simpsons Chocolate
• 3lb. Lt Munton’s DME
• 2oz. Willamette Leaf Hops
• Wyeast British Ale II

In addition J provided 2-16oz boxes of Hersheys unsweetened bakers chocolate I kept forgetting to buy.

Quantities used…well that was based off the book recipie weighed to the best of our abilities.  Which weren’t very good.  So exactly how much of anything got used is always going to be a bit of a mystery.

So we’ve got an uncertain new process we’re going to try and teach ourselves this week.  With a somewhat uncertain recipie.  With uncertain unproven new equipment put togther on the spot because our just completed new equipment was simply too large for the size of this batch!  Oh…and we got a late start.

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J and I got more work done on some equipment this weekend. Vessel #3 is almost ready - but we also decided that we need to find a SMALLER pot to use for this next brew as there aren’t enough grains to fill the bottom of one of the converted kegs. So we’ll be using one of the current pots with the new false bottom in it instead. We just need to make a custom drain tube for it. We also put this together:

Details on how how it went together below.

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Tonights Beer 1: Cream Ale (Northern Brewer kit)
Tonights Beer 2: Scottish 80/- (Northern Brewer kit)

Last week Nick wanted to do the Cream Ale this week. J and Jason both had ideas on heavier beers we wanted but my idea required a partial mash so we decided to give it an extra week to prepare equipment and do J’s 80/- wish this week.

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J and I both had the same realization on friday. Saturday I went over to Marks and started making it a reality. Nick came over to assist and we got quite a bit done. But there’s still more to do Sunday.

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Ingredients.
1/2 lb Specialty Grains
.375 lbs Dingleman’s Bisciut
.125 lbs Simpson’s Roasted Barley

12 lbs (yes, 12) Gold Malt Syrup

1oz Fuggle Hops (100 min) (extended boil)
1oz Fuggle Hops (40 min)
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Tonight’s beer: Belgian Dubbel (Abbey)
This is an authentic Abbey style ale like those that arose long ago in Trappist monasteries throughout Belgium.  Dark brown in color, high in gravity and alcohol, this kit exhibits medicinal, plum, and raisin flavors when fermented at warm temperatures.
Yeast: #1388 Belgian Strong Ale. Robust flavor yeast with moderate to high alcohol tolerance.  Fruity nose and palate, dry, tart finish.  Flocculation: low.  Apperent attenuation: 73-77%. Optimum temp: 65-75
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Tonight’s beer: St. Paul Porter
Due to an oversight last week no ingredients were ordered for this week. Thankfully we had the St. Paul Porter (It’s not a Sout DJ!) on hand so iinto the kettle it goes. Late start tonight, 9:22 the grains are going in. Jason got distracted typing this and missed the grain pull by 2 minutes so at 9:39 they finally came out and the propane was cranked up to start the boil. The boil started at 10??

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