Grove Street Summer Wheat, Big IPA

I’m late posting about this, but waaaay back on June 28th, I brewed Grove Street Summer Wheat.  I finally got around to bottling it last Sunday, July 26th.  Oops.  It was my first foray into stovetop partial-mash brewing, which went surprisingly well.

This past Monday, 7/27, I tried it again, making Grove Street Big IPA, which I expect to be bottling in about another week and a half.

Both recipes used a mash of 4lbs grain, and I calculated the volume and temperature for the strike and sparge water with the very handy SpargePal app on my iPod.  The whole procedure required the use of all four pots in my 2/3/4/5-gallon stockpot set, and I’m sure that with a better sparging method I could get much clearer wort, but overall I’m very happy with the results so far (but ask me again once I’ve tried one of the beers!).

Grove Street Pale Ale (A)

Last night I brewed Grove Street Pale Ale (A).  The “(A)” is because I had previously drawn up a Grove Street Pale Ale recipe, which I haven’t brewed yet, and this one is different.  I tried the mini-mash yeast starter again, and it seems to have worked well.

This is a nice, simple pale ale, with what should be a pretty good hop bite.  I thought something light would be good to complement the dark, dry Grove Street Stout.  I think I’ll do something more complicated next time, possibly a saison.

Grove Street Stout

Just brewed Grove Street Stout, actually my first stout in…six or seven years, I think.  Nothing very fancy, should be nice and dry, a little bit over the gravity and IBU limits for the BJCP Dry Stout style, but well within the range for American Stout.  Used Glacier for flavor and aroma, so we’ll see how that goes; I’ve been trying to branch out to different hops lately.  Also tried making a quart yeast starter 24 hours in advance this time, so hopefully that’ll get fermentation going right quick.  It was kind of fun doing the stovetop mash for the half-pound of grain I used for the starter; made me wish I had the space, equipment and time to do all-grain brews…

Bottling Day Pt. II

Got the “Dark Roast” Coffee Porter bottled — a big yield, 54 bottles, which I’m pleased about — and a friend came over to help, and brought a hydrometer, so I know the final gravity for this one: about 1.016, which is right around what I expected.  So with the standard assistance fee of a six-pack, I’ve got 100 bottles conditioning in the basement now: always a good thing.

Bottling Day Pt. I

The Grove St. Amber III is in bottles now — 52 bottles, which is a pretty good yield.  I meant to get started bottling yesterday, and get both the amber and the coffee porter done this weekend, but the porter will have to wait until tomorrow.  Also need to get labels printed up, but for now I’ve borrowed a friend’s method of just marking the caps with a Sharpie.  Although there’s something appealing about the idea of just not labeling any of them, and making it a game of chance.  Perhaps next time I bottle two batches in a row.

That’s all for now.  My hydrometer broke last weekend, so I wasn’t able to take a final gravity reading, but that’s not really terribly important.

Grove Street Amber Ale III

On Sunday the 23rd I made a third batch of my very successful Grove Street Amber Ale.  The hop bill is a bit different from the previous batches, due to limited selection, but it should be pretty close.

The recipe is here.

Grove Street "Dark Roast" Coffee Porter II

On Saturday the 22nd, I made a new batch of the coffee porter I made about a year ago.  Of course, I couldn’t find any copies written down of my recipe, so I made up a new one from scratch.  I was going to use Challenger for bittering and Fuggles for flavor and aroma, but hop supplies are still hit-and-miss, so I ended up with Amarillo and Mt. Hood instead; we’ll see how those work out.  Ten cups of very strong brewed, fresh-roasted Sumatra Blue Batak peaberry will give it plenty of coffee flavor, and the roasted barley and chocolate and black patent malts will make it nice and dark.

The recipe is over here.

State of the Beer

I finally got around to racking the Grove Street Honey Wheat lager this past weekend (and I’m glad it’s a lager, so I don’t feel too bad about having ended up leaving it in primary for eight weeks…).  It started out at 1.050 and hit 1.009, which is excellent; honey is great for efficient fermentation.  Nice light, clean taste.  It’ll be time to bottle in late July and time to drink it in early August, which should be perfect weather for this kind of beer.

I also finally made myself dump out the defunct barleywine.  I’ll try one again someday, but maybe not real soon; quite aside from the psychological blow of having all the expense I put into it go literally down the drain, it kept one of my carboys out of service for much too long.

As to what’s next, well, I still haven’t found the time to finish my mash tun, even though the remaining steps are relatively minor (cleaning up the burrs from making the slots will be a pain, though).  I’m going to try to get it done soon, but who knows.  If hop prices were lower, I’d be leaning toward an IPA, since I haven’t made one in a while, but as things stand that may not be practical.  When I come up with a recipe I’ll post it here.

Brown Ale, "Pilsener" and Future Brew Plans

The Grove Street Pilsener has turned out much darker than it ought to be (I incline to attribute this to the mistake with the malt extracts), so I think I’ll have to put the word “Pilsener” in scare quotes when referring to it, from now on.  It’s pretty tasty, though, and the Grove Street Brown Ale is coming along very well at a week from bottling.

Next weekend I plan to brew Grove Street Honey Wheat Lager:

• 1 3.3lb can light malt extract
• 3lb honey
• 1lb wheat malt
• 1oz Crystal or Mt. Hood, or 2oz Liberty, @60 minutes
• 1oz Crystal, Mt. Hood or Liberty @10 minutes
• White Labs San Francisco Lager or Wyeast California Lager yeast

and a couple of weeks after that, if I have my mash tun finished (it’s been on hold in the “nearly-done” state for quite a while now), I’ll be trying my first all-grain batch, with the use of a friend’s burner and brewpot.

Sadly, I think it’s past time to give up on the Big 10/20 Barley Wine.  It started acquiring that awful, cidery-sour taste some time ago, and the fermentation’s been excruciatingly slow for months.  I just haven’t had the heart to pour it out, but I think I don’t have a choice.  Barleywines, like pilseners, are probably something I’m going to wait a while, and read up on some different techniques, before trying again.

I will endeavor to ensure my next post is about something other than beer.

Grove Street Brews news

I haven’t written about beer (or, indeed, about anything else) in quite a while; real life has interfered with my blogging time to an alarming degree, as health, career and living space issues of various sorts have been abundant. In the immortal words of Harrison Ford, however, “we’re all fine … here … now. How are you?”

The Grove Street Amber was a huge success, so I brewed another batch (with slightly different ingredients; two cans of light malt syrup instead of one light and one extra-light, and WLP002 instead of 005), which also came out very good. I finally bottled the Grove Street Pilsener last weekend. And on March 17th I brewed the following recipe, which in keeping with my extremely clever naming system, I call Grove Street Brown Ale.

Two cans (6.6lbs) light malt extract syrup, 1lb Crystal 60, 0.5lb chocolate malt, 0.25lb roasted barley and 0.25lb black patent malt, for an estimated final color of about 31° and OG of 1.055. 1oz of Cascade plugs for 60 minutes, 1oz of Vanguard plugs for 10 minutes and 1oz of Vanguard plugs for 2 minutes, for an expected 33 IBUs. WLP001 yeast.

I expect to bottle that today, so shortly I’ll find out how it turned out.

[Supplemental, 2008-04-14: One week after bottling the Grove Street Pilsener, I’m trying a glass to see how it’s doing. It’s absolutely not pilsener-colored — much too dark, more like a pale ale or even an amber in color; I expect that’s largely because of the mixup with the extracts. But it tastes pretty all right, though it’s not quite possessed of the near-Platonic crispness I associate with Urquell et al. I think before I attempt any more lagers I really need to set up a lagering mini-fridge, because the basement just didn’t ever get cold enough for long enough, it was mostly above 50°F.]