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!