It wasn’t long after losing access to one brewing location that I was able to connect with another homebrewer friend of mine and get back to smelling grains in the mash tun, fresh hops and, yes, even iodophor. Mayhap a slight bit quirky, but I find those smells to be comforting to my soul and long for them on days that I cannot be brewing. After my friend Carl expressed his interest in homebrewing more often and picking my brain for brewing knowledge, we quickly put our equipment and heads together and came up with a recipe. A trip to the homebrew and restaurant supply stores and we were ready to brew.
After arranging our brewing paraphernalia, I weighed out our hop additions. Being a huge fan of Dogfish Head’s exercises in continual hopping, I had been wanting to try it for myself and with a northwest style pale ale on the docket, my thought was to round the edges of the hop presence and bring out their flavors. Carl had a few sample cups from previous beer tasting lying around, so we utilized those to hold the hops. As the brew day progressed, we found ourselves wandering over to the cups and taking a large sniff or two, attempting to note differences between the Cascades, Centennials and Columbus hops.
We got the water up to temperature and then took some time to stabilize it at 152°F. Brewing on new equipment always requires some adjustments, but I enjoy the challenge of repeating a similar process in dissimilar circumstances. Once comfortable with our level of control of the stove, we mashed in our grains, a mixture of two-row Pale and Crystal malts with a small amount of Rye thrown in to add some character. After a nice, warm dunk, we removed the grains and sparged them and added some malto-dextrin to aid mouthfeel.
We then ran into a bit of a snag when it was time to bring the wort up to a boil. Turns out Carl’s stove is just a little guy and was not pushing out much in the way of heat. Not enough to bring multiple gallons of dense liquid to a boil, anyway. We cranked the heat and put a lid on our brew pot and were rewarded with a nice rolling boil. The next brew day for us will be on Carl’s covered patio with a propane cast iron stove. Heat will not be a problem, methinks.
In with the first batch of hops and then we set to cleaning the carboy and necessary accoutrements. Juggling cleaning and responding to the timer’s buzzer to add more hops provided much movement for the next hour, but all went smoothly. After a relaxing ice bath, we transferred the wort to the carboy and topped off with some water and pitched our yeast. The ubiquitous clean up followed, helped along by a bottle of the Bagombo IPA.
Fermentation started sluggishly, but a careful move to a warmer room and the yeast happily began doing their job. I am sure Carl is getting sick of me calling or texting to check up on the beer, with a baby of his own to take care of, but we are both anticipating the delicious fruits of our labors and excited to get in another brew day this week.
For our next batch we have decided to throw our hat in the Cascadian Dark Ale ring with a hop monster featuring Warrior, Cascade, Mt. Hood and Magnum hops which we are calling Mother Night. It is shaping up to be a wonderful summer.
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