Jay's Brewing

In the homebrew world it can be difficult to learn on your own.  It’s always great if you be part of a community of some sort so you can bounce ideas back and forth.

Homebrew clubs are a great outlet for just that.  What a homebrew club is essentially, is a group of homebrewers that meet up and you make beer together or try beer together or just have beer related activities… together. It’s very common to have some dues for being part of a club because, well things aren’t free in this world so there you go.  Depending on which club you go to, you’ll have different groups of people.  Some are extremely, “Beer nerded”, up and others are more like the, “Chillax“, brewers.

I’ve had so many beers!

One of the biggest benefits to joining a homebrew club though is feedback on your beer that is constructive from other homebrewers.  This is usually done by having some type of competition or just passing your beer around at meetings.

If you are just thinking about homebrewing and haven’t gotten into it yet, homebrew clubs are a great place to go as well.  It’s common for a homebrew club to let you sit into a meeting or two to get a feel for the group of  guys (and ladies) as well as the atmosphere.  Since brewing is what they do, it’s also a great venue to ask to sit in a brew session and see how it all works if you’ve never brewed before or want to try something new like all-grain.

Here in Prince William near our shop there is a homebrew club called, DOH.  If you’re interested, they are a good group of guys and they have a wide range of experience.  So if you are just starting out you’ll have plenty to learn from these guys and they are used to, “Beginner Questions”, and if you’ve been brewing for a while there is still room for you as well.  Like I said, wide range of experience.  They are a pretty new club only being around for year but have grown tremendously in that past year.

Homebrew clubs are a great way to further your knowledge in homebrewing and also hang out with some pretty cool cats that have the same hobby as you.  I can also think of more painful things to do during the week than shooting the breeze and tipping back some bottles of homebrew.  So if you are the area, make sure to check out their website and stop by a meeting!

Related Post

Why It May Be Time To Move Away From Kits

Summer Blonde – So Easy

Extract Into All-Grain

Brewing Personalities 

It’s a pretty common thing when getting into brewing and to see crystal malts and get kinda confused.  Hopefully in this post I can clarify some things about it.

Crystal malts are found in a lot of beers, and when starting out is a great specialty grain to use because you can get two very dependable results by using it.  1) You will end up changing the color of the beer 2) You will make the beer a bit sweeter.  So to not make a beer boring you can use some crystal malt in your beer and now you’ve just added a different dimension to it.

The malt can be used by itself or it can be used in conjunction of different specialty grains.  At the end of it, though you’ll see all these different numbers next to the grain.  So what do these numbers mean?   The, “L” stands for Lovibond.  All that means is color.   Concerning crystal malt, the most popular ones are, 20L, 40L, 60L, 80L, 120L.  The lower the number the lighter the color impact as well as flavor.  The higher the number is the darker the beer and the sweeter the beer flavor it.  We have a post that goes into some pretty big detail about it all if this interest you.

For a rule of thumb with crystal malt no matter what type you are using, I would not use over a pound of it at a time.  Eventually if you keep adding more and more to a recipe, it will stick out like a sore thumb.   After a while using it for the purpose of only adjusting the color you might find that you get burnt out of the grain.  At that point I would start to learn how the different specialty change color and you’ll be able to make a wider variety of beer styles.

Related Post

How To Make IPA’s A Bit Different

Specialty Grains

How To Design Your Own Beer

Easy Lager Guide

This was a beer that I did with Proper Hops.  Make sure to like and spread the love!

The recipe that we used is:

OG: 1.045
FG: 1.009
ABV: 4.7%
IBU: 53
SRM: 8.48
3.3 lbs Munich LME
2 lbs Pils DME
.25 lbs Carapils
.25 lbs Victory
.5 lbs Aromatic
.5 lbs Honey Malt
.5 oz Columbus (60min)
.25 oz Warrior (30min)
.5 oz Amarillo (20 min)
.33 oz Amarillo (10 min)
.33 oz Centennial (10 min)
.33 oz Simcoe (10 min)
.33 oz Amarillo (5 min)
.33 oz Centennial (5 min)
.33 oz Simcoe (5 min)
.33 oz Amarillo (0 min)
.33 oz Centennial (0 min)
.33 oz Simcoe (0 min)
.5 oz Amarillo (7 days)
.5 oz Centennial (7 days)
1 oz Simcoe (7 days)
YEAST: danstar bry 97

Related Post

Session IPA

Russian Beer Making

Russian Beer Tasting

When I go on hikes and can start to smell the honeysuckles in bloom, I know that it is time to make this wine.  Honeysuckle wine usually turns out to be a pretty dry wine.  Over the years I have ended up making it more of a mead then anything else.  This one is pretty easy to make though.

It’s best to use the flower part of the honeysuckle not the stem.

One suggestion that I don’t include in this recipe is that you might want to back sweeten this wine with more honey. 

Yield: 1 Gallon

6 cups honeysuckle flower petals (loosely packed)

7.5 pints of water

• 2 lbs Honey

2 tsp acid blend

• 1/8 tsp tannin

• 1 tsp yeast nutrient

• Champagne wine yeast

Directions

• Take flowers and rinse off
• Put flowers in a small pot
• Add 1 quart water and bring to a simmer.
• Let pedals steep for 3 hours  
• Bring water and honey up to boil (2 parts water 1 part honey)
• Remove from heat and cool.
• Add honey mixture and flower mixture into primary while straining out flower pedals
• Add all remaining ingredients
• Let wine ferment until vigorous fermentation is completed
• Rack into secondary and fit airlock
• Let wine sit for 30 days, rack
• Set aside for 6 months
• Rack again in 3 months
• Bottle and put into wait for 6 months to drink

Related Post

Marigold Wine

Dandelion Wine

Blackberry Wine

Session Beer Series

The last recipe that I wanted to go over for this series is the, Scottish 60 Schilling.  For a long time this actually use to be my favorite style of beer out of all the beers.  In my opinion Scottish beers are a completely under served beer style today.  I don’t really see to many of them and of course you won’t find the light ones.  This is the light type of Scottish beers.  The 60 schilling was one of the originals as far as session beers go.   Now today when people talk about Scottish beers they are referred to normally as, “Light, Heavy, Export”.  This style of beer would go under the, “light” category.

This style of beer has a nice mouthfeel to it, and is quite malty.  The hop characteristics are quite low and normally pretty floral.  Usually you get a smoked flavor that comes out of the beer as well.  For this particular beer, its got a  malty flavor with floral hops.  This beer is light all around though.  For all-grain make sure to use M.O or Golden Promise.  Either or will give you a malty flavor that you are looking for.

Ingredients

8 oz Crystal 60L

8 oz Munich Malt

2 oz Roast Barley

4.5 Light Liquid Malt Extract

.75 oz Fuggle Hops (60min)

WLP 028 or Saf 04

Specs

OG: 1.034

FG: 1.009

SRM: 13.2

ABV: 3.3%

IBU: 16.6

Directions

• Heat 2.5 gallons of water up 150 degrees
• Steep grains for 30 min
• Take grains out
• Add malt extract
• Bring to boil
• In beginning of boil, add 1 oz of hops
• Boil for 60 min
• End boil
• Cool, down, put in fermenter, fill up to 5 gallons and pitch yeast
• Let ferment for 1 weeks
• Put in bottles with .75 cup of corn sugar

Related Post

Session Beer Series 1

Session Beer Series 2

Session Beer Series 3

Session Beer Series 4

Session Beer Series 5

Session Beer Series 6

Session Beer Series 7

Scottish Wee Heavy Recipe

We will be closed this coming Monday May 13th.  There’s going to be a newsletter sent out also with this as a reminder.  Normal hours will resume for the rest of the week at Jay’s Brewing.  Hours of operation can be found here.

Last week I got a call from my sister late night on Thursday, “Ya, your website got hacked”.  My first thought was, probably her computer.  So I ended up checking for myself and yes,  it was.  At first I wondered why.  Seems like a reasonable question to ask.  I have nothing of value on this website such as credit card information from customers or anything of that nature – it’s a blog.  Then it came to me, some people are just dicks.  Congratulations to the hacker, you officially brought down a WordPress site.  I can check that off the bucket list of things

I write this post only to let everyone know that the website is back up and in order.  So blog post will resume as normal and thank you for you patience.

My latest of projects has been working on is creatiing really light lager that you can give to most people that don’t drink beer.  Essentially it’s a homebrew version of a commercial lager.  It just so happens that it is a session beer as well. For those that don’t know to much about lagers you need to do them with colder fermentation.  We do have a guide that breaks down how to lager beer.

If you don’t want to do a lager because it takes too much time or just don’t have the correct fermentation equipment, I would just change the yeast strand for this beer to something much lighter.  However, if you do plan on lagering this beer I would recommend making 10 gallons instead of 5.  Since it’s a lighter beer it’s going to be consumed pretty quickly and the wait time for lagers is substantial. The recipe listed below is for a 5 gallon recipe.

This beer is light, crisp, and does not have a whole lot of color or hoppyness.  Some might say this is what they were trying to get away from and that’s why they got into craft beer or homebrewing.  To me though, this beer is something that is just easy to drink  in the summer time.   If you are going to do this recipe all-grain then I would use 6-Row if you have the choice.  6-row will give the beer an old school flavor to the beer.  2-Row brewers malt will also work just perfectly fine.

Ingredients

3 lbs Golden Light Malt Extract

1 lbs Corn Sugar

.25 lbs Rice Syrup Solids

.5 oz Tettnanger Hops (60 min)

WLP 840 for Lager

Saf 05 or 060 for Ales

Specs

OG: 1.034

FG: 1.007

SRM: 2.47

ABV: 3.5%

Instructions

• Take malt extract, rice syrup solids, corn sugar and put in a pot with 2.5 gallons of water
• Bring to boil
• Add tettnanger hops
• Boil for 60 min
• End boil
• Cool, down, put in fermenter
• Depending if you are making a lager out of this beer or doing an ale dictates the next plan on action
• If you plan on lagering we have set of instructions for you on that
• For ale, pitch yeast, and ferment for 1 week
• Bottle and use .75 cup of corn sugar for priming
• Let sit in bottles for 2 weeks before you drink

Related Post

Session Beers Step 1

Session Beers Step 2

Session Beers Step 3

Session Beers Step 4

Session Beers Step 5

Session Beers Step 6

Designing Your Beer Style

Extract To All-Grain

There are just a few more of these session beers I want to tackle before we leave this series.  One of the ones that I love to make is a session wheat beer for the summer time.  It’s really easy to drink and pretty refreshing.  In my wheat brews I like to add just an ounce or two of acidulated malt.  The reason for adding acidulated malt is that the beer always taste less, “Flat”, to me.  Normally with wheats when you drink them they tend to have a big banana or clove flavor and that’s about it.  When you add in acidulated malt it will give a bit of a tang to it.

Having a beer that is a bit more multidimensional in my opinion is just a signature of a good brewer, but it’s even more important when you are making smaller beers.  If you don;t they end up just tasting like sparkling water with hops in them.  At the same token you don’t want too much going on because something so small is going to be delicate to changes – the balance is key.  Acidulated malt will give a bit of a tang, the torrified wheat/flaked wheat will give the beer it’s wheat flavor as well as a good mouth feel and meladonin will change the color just a bit and make the brew a bit more malty.

The hops are really lightly hopped and have a low alpha acid.  This is vital for a beer that sits at 3.9%.  This is a fantastic summer beer and one that I totally recommend you trying out – perfect for after mowing the lawn.   If you are going to do this one all-grain then you would want to use Pilsner malt.

Ingredients

1 oz Acidulated Malt

2 oz Melanoidin Malt

1 lbs Torrified Wheat

1 lbs Wheat Flaked

3 lbs Pilsen Malt

.25 oz Cascade (60 min)

.5 oz Liberty (60 min)

.5 oz Cascade (10 min)

.25 oz Liberty (5 min)

WLP 320 or WB-06

Specs

OG: 1.038

FG: 1.008

SRM: 2.55

IBU: 20.7

ABV: 3.9%

Directions

• Heat 2.5 gallons to 150 degrees
• Steep grains for 30 minutes
• Take grains out
• Add in malt extract
• Bring to boil
• Add .25 oz of cascade and .5 oz of Liberty to boil
• Boil for 50 min
• Add .5 oz cascade hops
• Boil for 5 min
• Add .25 oz of liberty hops
• Boil for 5 min
• End boil
• Cool down, put in fermenter, pitch yeast
• Ferment for 7 days
• Bottle with .75 cup of corn sugar
• Let sit in bottles for 2-3 weeks

Previous Post

Next Post

Related Post

Session Beers Step 1

Session Beers Step 2

Session Beers Step 3

Session Beers Step 4

Session Beers Step 5

White Sangria 

Summer Maple Syrup Pale Ale

With session beers they are supposed to be light and refreshing.  I ended up just doing a session IPA a little bit ago and I’m going to be putting it in bottles this week.  This one is pretty cool and a bit different.  I’ll give you the tasting notes once I give it a sip.

As a base I used Munich and Pils.   The Munich malt is going to make the beer a bit more chewy and also make it a bit darker.  I’ve done all-grain IPA’s using Munich as a base malt but this is the first time I’ve done it with extract and specialty grains using it as the malt extract.  I expect the same results.

As far as the grains go, I took some tips from some customers that make IPA’s all the time and they turn out fantastic.  Honey malt really is used just to make it a bit sweeter so I didn’t have to use crystal malt, carapils is for the head retention,  victory to add to the chewy flavor, and aromatic to give a malty smell.  The specialty grains make this IPA geared more towards an East Coast IPA rather than a West Coast IPA.

The first additions of the hops are some pretty clean hops, Columbus for the bittering followed by a bit of Warrior.  Columbus hops are among my favorite for bittering just because they are so clean.  Then I did a quick hop bursting at the end.  This type of hop addition was added to give the illusion that the beer is actually hoppier then what it really is, since the beer is sitting at 53 IBU’s.

For the yeast I used the new Danstar yeast.  It’s actually meant for West Coast IPA’s but I wanted to give it a go for this one either way.

I’m doing a tasting of it with Proper Hops pretty soon to give some good feed back on this one and let you know how it turns out.  On paper though, this looks like a stellar session IPA.

OG: 1.045
FG: 1.009
ABV: 4.7%
IBU: 53
SRM: 8.48

3.3 lbs Munich LME
2 lbs Pils DME

.25 lbs Carapils
.25 lbs Victory
.5 lbs Aromatic
.5 lbs Honey Malt

.5 oz Columbus (60min)
.25 oz Warrior (30min)
.5 oz Amarillo (20 min)
.33 oz Amarillo (10 min)
.33 oz Centennial (10 min)
.33 oz Simcoe (10 min)
.33 oz Amarillo (5 min)
.33 oz Centennial (5 min)
.33 oz Simcoe (5 min)
.33 oz Amarillo (0 min)
.33 oz Centennial (0 min)
.33 oz Simcoe (0 min)
.5 oz Amarillo (7 days)
.5 oz Centennial (7 days)
1 oz Simcoe (7 days)

YEAST: danstar bry 97

Directions

1. Heat 2.5 gallons of water up to 150 degrees
2. Steep grains for 30 minutes
3. Take grains out
4. Add in malt extract
5. Bring to boil
6. Add Columbus Hops
7. Boil for 30 minutes
8. Add warrior hops
9. Boil for 10 minutes
10. Add .5 oz of Amarillo hops
11. Boil for 10 minutes
12. Add .33 oz Amarillo .33 oz Centennial .33 oz Simcoe
13. Boil for 5 minutes add .33 oz Amarillo .33 oz Centennial .33 oz Simcoe
14. Boil for 5 minutes and turn off heat
15. Add .33 oz Amarillo .33 oz Centennial .33 oz Simcoe
16. Let sit for 10 min then cool down put in fermenter, fill to 5 gallons and pitch yeast
17. After 7 days of fermentation add  .5 oz Amarillo .5 oz Centennial
    1 oz Simcoe
18. Let sit for 7 more days then bottle with 3/4 cup of corn sugar

Previous Post

Next Post

Related Post

Session Beers Step 1

Session Beers Step 2

Session Beers Step 3

Session Beers Step 4

How To Make IPA’s Better

Conversion Chart