West of Eden All Natural Ale

My first beer made entirely from homegrown ingredients! I planted a patch of barley in January, which we harvested in July. Got a total of about 25lbs from 2lbs of 6-row barley that I planted. Not a very good yield, since the birds ate quite a lot, but enough to give a truly homegrown brew a try! I also planted 3 hops plants from rhizomes. They are 3 different kind: Cascade, Chinook and Mt Hood. They all grew quite vigorously but only the Chinook produced some cones, plus very few on the Cascades plant. That is already surprising given that this is the first year! After drying the hops I got about 3oz, enough for one batch of beer. The malting of the barley was probably the most difficult part. You need to get the grains to sprout, by repeatedly soaking, but then you will need to stop the sprouting process immediately to prevent 'green' flavors by having actual green sprouts forming. I wasn't able to prevent that completely on account of only air drying available here. In hindsight I should have started the drying process earlier. Let's see. About 3 pounds I set aside and roasted in batches of 1lb for 1hr each at 375F in the oven. Just chewing on some of those grains revealed a really nice and toasty caramel malt flavor, I'm really excited to see how that all turns out! After drying, the malted barley needs to be crushed. I bought a manual grain mill that does the job just fine. Took me a while to crush all that malt, was quite messy too. For yeast I'm just using the same strain from my last batch, American Ale 1056. I just kept a little trub after secondary racking of my previous batch, and kept it alive by feeding with sugar once in a while.

BREW DATE: 10/02/2016

BOTTLING DATE: 11/02/2016

GRAIN BILL: 11.5lbs total

-8.5lbs Jarvis 6-row Base Malt

-3lbs Jarvis 6-row Caramel Malt

MASH-IN: 1 hr at 160F. Fly sparked with 175F water. First drain was really cloudy, had to return to the mash 3 times before it started clearing up a little. OG showed 14brix in the initial drain which is quite low. I guess it has to do with my not exactly perfect malting and maybe the fact that this is 6-row barley. For brewing it is better to use 2-row, as 6-row has lots of enzymes and thus results in some turbid protein fallout, and usually less sugars. 6-row is typically used for adjunct brewing, where some of the grain bill is substituted with (cheap) high starch containing grains, like corn or rice. Corn or rice doesn't have enzymes that can convert starch to malt sugar, thus your base malt needs lots of enzymes. Next year I will plant 2-row I guess. Just tasting the initial extract is actually showing some nice potential, very grainy, malty taste with some caramel behind. Didn't come out as dark as I expected, though. More like a light Amber color.

HOP SCHEDULE:

-60min 1oz Jarvis Chinook leaf hops

-30min 0.5oz Jarvis Chinook leaf hops

-5min 0.5oz Jarvis Chinook leaf hops

Dry hopped after 1 week fermentation with 1oz Jarvis Chinook leaf hops

OG: 8.7 brix for 18l wort filled up to 18l => alcohol content should come out at 4.5%.

YEAST: Wyeast American Ale 1056

TASTE NOTES: wow this one came out super hoppy. I guess fresh hops does make a difference! For an IPA a little too light though. Overall not bad for a first try with home malting! To get some truly malty flavors I guess I need to devise a better method for drying the grains after sprouting. Also turned out very cloudy somehow, I give it 2.5 stars maybe. 

Update: After about 3 more weeks conditioning this one is getting better and better! The ultra hoppiness has given way to spicy aromas with hints of nutmeg and cloves, very much became a true Christmas ale! 

West of Eden Chestnut Brown Ale

My second attempt on a chestnut infused beer. The first try 2 years ago was somewhat disappointing, but you learn from mistakes! We have a small chestnut tree on our property, and this is the first year it was actually bearing fruit! Last year was nothing but empty husks, probably due to the ongoing drought situation. Usually, a chestnut tree needs cross pollination, I.e. Other chestnut trees around, to produce nuts. This tree is all by himself, and I'm really wondering where the pollen came from. Chestnuts are beautiful trees. The nuts are delicious and I guess I'll plant some more around here. The Romans used chestnuts to feed their armies while on the prowl across Europe. There are still swaths of mountain sides covered in chestnut trees in Northern Italy and on the island of Corsica. Until 150 years ago the East Coast of the US also had plenty of chestnut trees, however they all died from the chestnut blight. There are just a few left in California and Oregon, where they had been transplanted from East Coast settlers. The one on our property could be one of those, but I think based on how it looks it's probably the European type. They are kind of hard to tell apart. The nutty aroma of the chestnut should go well with a Dark Brown Ale style beer. So here it is, plenty of dark roasted barley malt, which is also directly from our property, paired with an infusion of roasted and ground chestnuts! I ran out of my hops harvest, so pellet hops from the store had to do on this one. Update: Actually, somehow the gravity came in really low, so I guess my malting process still needs optimization. For this batch I really stopped the germination once the sprouts were about 2/3 of the grain length, as described in the book, however yield was much lower compared to my first malting batch where the sprouting kind of ran away. Anyways, added some malt extract to compensate for that.

BREW DATE: 10/30/2016

BOTTLING DATE: 12/10/2016

GRAIN BILL: 12lbs total

-8lbs Jarvis Base Malt

-2.5lbs Jarvis Dark Malt (mix of roasted malts)

-1lb Jarvis roasted chestnuts, ground

-1lb Briess Golden Malt Extract (gravity came in low, so had to spike it a little)

MASH-IN: 1 hr at 160F, Fly sparked with 175F water.

HOP SCHEDULE:

-60min 1oz German Hersbrucker

-30min 1oz Czech Saaz 

-10min 1oz Czech Saaz

OG: 9.2 brix for 14l wort, left it at that => alcohol content should come out at 4.8%.

YEAST: Wyeast Ringwood Ale 1087

TASTE NOTES: Yess, nailed this one quite right. Color is dark chestnut brown, smooth head. Very malty flavors with just a hint of the chestnuts I've used. No off 'hot' taste, as I had with my previous attempt. A true winter warmer! 

West of Eden Pale Ale

After doing one more batch of Fool's Wit (which is perfect for the summer!), I decided to go for a run of the mill Pale Ale. They seem to be quite ubiquitous nowadays, but it is really hard to find an excellent one. The secret, at least to me, for an excellent Pale Ale lies in the choice of hops. What I'm trying to get is floral hops aromas paired with light malt flavors that don't get overwhelmed by high gravity. A Pale Ale with 6.5% abv is really an IPA with not enough hops, so that's a no-go for me. In order to get everything out of the hops, you really want to stick to leaf hops. Cascade is a great choice, it has tons of flavor without getting too bitter. So this recipe uses solely Cascade leaf hops. Once my Chinook crops come in I will try in another batch how that compares. Munich malt adds some nice malty flavors, and a bit of wheat will add some fruitiness. For a change I also changed my supplier. Saved me a couple of bucks but I noticed the grain crush wasn't very good with lots of completely intact grains. Therefore I ran the Brewers and Munich malt through my manual mill, to break it down a little more and hopefully extract some more sugars. Let's see how it comes out!

BREW DATE: 08/21/2016

BOTTLING DATE: 09/18/2016

GRAIN BILL: 12lbs total

-6lbs Rahr Brewers Malt

-6lbs Weyermann Munich Malt

-2lbs Rahr White Wheat Malt

MASH-IN: 1 hr at 160F, Fly sparked with 170F water. Starting brix was 25, I stopped extraction at 10 brix since I ran out of containers. In hindsight should have continued for at least another 2l. Oh well.

HOP SCHEDULE:

-60min 1oz Cascade Leaf hops

-30min 1oz Cascade Leaf hops

-10min 1oz Cascade Leaf hops

Dry hopped after 7d 1oz Cascade Leaf hops. Racked to secondary stage after 2 weeks.

OG: 15.0 brix for 13l wort filled up to 20l => alcohol content should come out at 5.2% abv.

YEAST: Wyeast American Ale 1056

TASTE NOTES: Indeed a nice Pale Ale! Nice color, lots of fresh hoppiness from the leaf hops, bready malty undertones. One thing that I have problems getting right is the carbonation, there are always some bottles that are super carbonated even though I try to mix the carbonation sugar thoroughly.

West of Eden Pale Ale!

St. Paul Porter

For a change I got an all-grain recipe kit from Northernbrewer: St. Paul Porter. I have done this one before and it was pretty good. From the description: "An assertive black ale dominated by roast-coffee and chocolate character and hop bitterness." The recipe calls for 152F sach rest, but I went a little bit higher to make sure I have good conversion. That always seems to be a problem otherwise. Also, the package had 2oz of Cluster hops, whereas the recipe calls for 1.5oz. Oh well, am I going to throw the hops away? Not a chance.. Anyways, this is an exercise of getting some baseline, and I was really yearning for a nice dark and smooth brew!

BREW DATE: 03/27/2016

BOTTLING DATE: 

GRAIN BILL: 10lbs total

-8.5lbs Rahr 2-Row Malt

-0.5lb English Chocolate Malt

-1lb English Medium Crystal

MASH-IN: 1 hr at 155F, Mash-out 10 min at 170F. Fly sparked with 175F water. I noticed there were lots of relatively long shoots, about 6-8mm, in the mash, floating to the top. That means the malting place must have let the barley sprout for too long. Usually one should start the malting process when the sprouts are 2-3mm long. Hmm, so much about Rahr..

HOP SCHEDULE:

-60min 2oz Cluster

-1min 1oz Cascade

OG: 13.8 brix for 12l wort filled up to 22l => alcohol content should come out at 4.0% but somehow that method always underestimates abv. Most likely it will be around 4.5%. Looks like conversion wasn't too great, I'd blame it on the long sprouts that I found in the mash.

YEAST: Wyeast 1187 Ringwood Ale

TASTE NOTES: As expected this one came out a little on the light side. Still great Porter, full malty flavors, solid foamy head and lingering notes of coffee and tobacco. Some residual cloudiness which I attribute to the oversprouted malt. Still quite nice.

West of Eden Maerzen

It's time for a Maerzen! Maerzen style beer uses high gravity tolerant lager yeasts, and usually have a light to medium brown body with lots of malt flavor and some hints of caramel. It's what got people in the olden times across lent, the 4 weeks between Ash Wednesday and Easter. This is the time where you are supposed to be fasting, but where also back breaking work had to be done in the fields, like plowing, seeding and so on. So people made the best out of it, drinking heavy beer during the day to keep the calorie intake in balance, while remaining devoted to traditional fasting. Co-incidentally a beer was created that also tastes very good! My take on this is a mixture of Dark Munich and Vienna Malts with a dash of roasted Caramel malt. Hoppiness is kept on the low side with pure Hallertau leaf hops, a low alpha hops from Southern Germany that yet holds lots of flavor.

BREW DATE: 01/23/2016

BOTTLING DATE: 03/05/2016

Plenty of malt to go into this beer

GRAIN BILL: 11lbs total

-4lbs Rahr 2-row Malt

-3lbs Dark Munich Malt

-3lbs Vienna Malt
- 1lb Caramunich III Malt

MASH-IN: 1 hr at 153F, Mash-out 10 min at 170F. Fly sparked with 175F water.

HOP SCHEDULE:

-60min 1oz German Hallertau leaf hops

-15min 1oz German Hallertau leaf hops

OG: Alcohol content should come out at 4.8%.

YEAST: Wyeast California Lager

TASTE NOTES: Decidedly malty, smooth flavor. Crisp and earthy undertones, subtle hops. Medium head retention. Pretty close to a Maerzen, I would say. Awesome when enjoyed on our porch overlooking the orchard in full spring colors!

West of Eden Maerzen!

West of Eden Pilsener

It's winter again so time to dive into Lager brewing! This time I'm really going over the top with my ingredients, using only pure Salzgitter Pilsener malt, and a mixture of German and Czech hops. For yeast, I got my hands on the original Pilsener Urquell yeast! Lots of anticipations! My workshop sits at about 6-8C so these are exactly right conditions for a Pilsener. I ended up 2 weeks on the primary fermenter and 3 weeks on the secondary. Ideally you want to lager a little longer but I was running out of my previous brew :-)

BREW DATE: 12/13/2015

BOTTLING DATE: 01/17/2016

Went all in with 100% Pilsener Malt!

GRAIN BILL: 12lbs total

-12lbs German Salzgitter Pilsener Malt. Noticed they crushed it a lot with plenty of grist. 

MASH-IN: 1 hr at 158F, no mash-out. Fly sparged with 175F water. The sparge got almost stuck and it took forever to lauter. I kind of gave up when the gravity reached 10 brix, running out of time and all. Usually, I would keep lautering until 7brix but I figured I had enough gravity on account of 12lbs of malt. Doing the calculation it looks kind of low alcohol, though. One thing I noted is that the extrapolation always ends up on the low side, so I should be ok. I try not to get OG reading from the final mixture as I'm kind of scared contaminating the beer.

HOP SCHEDULE:

-60min 1oz German Hallertau leaf hops

-30min 1oz German Hallertau leaf hops

-10min 1oz Czech Saaz pellet hops

OG: 20.8 brix for 9l wort filled up to 23l => alcohol content should come out at 4.4%.

YEAST: Wyeast Pilsener Urquell 2001. 1 day to kick off fermentation at about 20C, then into the workshop at 6-8C.

TASTE NOTES: This is a really nice and mellow beer. Like it very much, fruity aromas, light head, beautiful color, a hint of sweetness. However it is (again!) not a Pilsener, really more like a Steam beer, like Anchor Steam. This yeast doesn't seem to settle well, so you won't get the clear color usually found in Pilseners. Somewhat hazy, unfiltered look, but doesn't seem to affect taste negatively. I probably didn't have cool enough temperatures in my workshop. The temperature during the day probably went up to 12C, maybe that is already too much. 

West of Eden Pilsener!