Santa Monica Pale Ale

Now that I'm living in Manhattan Beach, it was time to check out the local homebrew store and start a housewarming batch. I found Culver City Home Brewing not far away - nice fully stocked store where you can go in and measure out any ingredient you need for any beer. It's also the meeting place for a homebrew club known as Pacific Gravity - I'll be considering joining in the near future. I wanted to brew a lighter summer beer, so I picked up their Santa Monica Pale Ale kit and a brew kettle. Recipe below.

Malt Extract: Pale 6 lbs
Grain Bill: Crystal 40L 8oz, Crystal 10L 8oz
Hopping Schedule: Columbus (15.5%) 0.55oz 60min, Cascade 0.7oz 15min, Cascade 1.0oz 0min
Yeast: Safale US-05

This is my first use of dry yeast (not counting the doomed Cooper's kit). I pitched late last night, and when I woke up, the airlock was bubbling nicely. I'm also trying a new way to maintain consistent fermentation temperature at the advise of the brewer working at CCHB - I placed the carboy in a big plastic bucket of water. This should smooth out natural temperature fluctuations and allows me to get a more accurate temperature reading since the water temperature should match the brew temperature. If it gets too hot, I can throw some ice in the bucket. I forgot to pick up some Irish Moss, so the carboy has a bunch of crud settled in the bottom already and my final brew will likely be a bit cloudy. Looks like the pale ale will end up fairly dark too due to the use of LME. If the beer turns out fantastic, it may be worth re-brewing with some DME to lighten the color and tweak the flavor balance.

UPDATE:

Bottled 7/8/10. Left in primary for 3 full weeks. Seemed to stay cloudy for a long time and I wanted to secondary it to try and help it clear but it seems current homebrew knowledge suggests long primaries are best. Lets the yeast work magic on the leftovers and may clear the beer better than a secondary. FG is 1.017 which should give me about 4.38% abv. Tastes pretty good. Pretty sweet and malty and the nose is less than anticipated but I have high hopes for when it's carbed up. Think it's going to be a good summer beer.

Apple Jack

So since I was sitting on several gallons of apfelwein (too much good beer to drink instead of some mediocre cider), I decided to try my hand at freeze concentration. I poured a couple quarts into an old LME container and put it in the freezer. Several hours later, I dumped the contents into a strainer and collected the drippings. Since most of the frozen leftovers should be water, this should increase the alcohol content and make the solution harder to freeze. This never happened. Each time I collected and refroze, it came out as the same slushy mix. I kept at it anyway until I had about a pint on liquid (which would still freeze). The result was considerably darker and stronger smelling. It did not taste very good. I had read online that most attempts to do this end up tasting badly. It was interesting to try, but I will not likely attempt it again unless I have a lot of excellent tasting cider sitting around.

Cal Poly Cup

Last month I participated in my first BJCP sanctioned homebrew competition - the Cal Poly Cup. This was put on by Cal Poly's homebrew club at a local microbrewery. I submitted my Belgian and Dunkleweizen mostly to get some criticism and hopefully brew better in the future.

My dunkleweizen (category 15b) ended up scoring a 25 (out of 50), which is "good" according to BJCP. The judges commented that they would like to see more yeast character. I used a classic, strong yeast for this beer, fermented on the warm side, and didn't do any type of filtering, so I thought I would be getting more yeast character than necessary. I understand where they're coming from though, since I've had dunkleweizens with a huge banana and clove nose. Perhaps the next time I make one I will bottle sooner to try and capture more yeast in suspension.

My Belgian (category 18b) did better with a 32.5, considered "very good." The judges asked to see more yeast character in this beer as well. Same story as above. I let the beer sit for a full 3 weeks, so perhaps I let too much delicious yeast settle out. They seemed to like the beer overall, and suggested adding complexity while keeping the beer as clean tasting as it does. A friend of mine added some brown sugar to this same recipe, but I could not pick it up in his brew and actually preferred my own. Adding some more steeping grains may bring out more complex flavors.

Overall, an interesting experience. I wish it had been more organized (I had to go pick up my forms after I had waited a couple weeks anxiously watching my mailbox), and would have liked to see full results - I have no idea how I stacked up compared to others, how categories were grouped, etc. I'm sure I will enter more competitions in the near future, but I see this criticism working best for starting with a good beer and continuously improving it. I plan on brewing many different styles before trying to really nail down an award winning recipe. Next in the pipeline will be a lighter summer beer.