Red Hop Rocket

10 Gallon Batch

20 lbs    2-Row organic

3   lbs    Carared (Morebeer)

2   lbs    Crystal 40 organic

1   lbs    Carapils organic

60 mins 2 viles of hop jizz

20 mins Chinook 5 oz, coil, tablet

10 mins Citra 5 oz 

5   mins Citra 2 oz, Chinook 3 oz

Yeast: Yeast from Blind Pig batch reused.

150 F Mash for 90 mins

170 F Sparge to make 12 gallons. Slow mash out. 

Produce 12 gallons

Boiled down to 10.5 gallons

Dry hop

7 days - 4 oz Chinook, 6 oz Citra

Cold crash then keg 

Lager for 4 weeks at fridge temperature. 

OG  1.072
Gravity after 9 days 1.046, tastes sweet with fruit bowl and lesser piney flavours. Needs more fermentation. Head of foam has resided. Leave for a total of three weeks.

FG   est 1.01

ABV 8%

Jan 18 - Poured into 2 bucket. One with Chinook hops (2 oz) and the other 4 gallon vessel has Citra hops (1 oz)
Jan 25 - Poured into keg with CO2. I will let this rest until March 1st to get a clean hop aroma.
Feb 1 - Coming along nicely. Huge hop flavour and strong hop aroma.
Feb 6 - Perfect! Hop-delicious. Aging help give this the light body, nice mouth feel with crisp hoppy flavours and aromas. One of my best. The red malt is a favorite of mine. This is a lot like a IPA with heavy hops. The ABV is high but it tastes like a 4% beer.
March 6, 2014 - Aged to perfection. Amazing hoppy malty fresh full bodied Red Ale. Do this again with other great IPA hops.
March 15, 2014 - Rich wonderful hoppy. Winner!

March 23 - Ok. This was a solid good. Hoppy red ale but I have to refine my process if I'm doing this again. This beer was too bitter and too heavy. Hop aroma was very nice but this is not an easy drinking beer. 

Areas to improve:

1. Mash at 149F to lower heaviness 

2. Lower red and 40 malt to about 1/2

3.  Focus on dry hopping a series if hops each for 4 days

There are no surprises with this beer. Considering the ingredients this is what I would expect with the beer. 

Apfelwein, Hard Cyder

First time brewing hard cider. 

Ingredients 

5 gallons of apple juice (Pastured pure juice, no ascorbic acid etc)

2 lbs of dextrose (To give punch)

WLP 775 Yeast (Considered to give a clean cidery finish)

1 teaspoon Fermaid K (To assist in fermentation)

Mixed in and stirred let stand at 63F - 68F for 10 days. Kegged and pressurized to 20 PSI for 10 days. 

It took about 2 days for active fermentation to begin. Then a slow steady fermentation happened for about 8 days. 

Dec 22nd - Added 32 oz (5% of total batch) of apple juice to sweeten batch. Added 1 crushed Camden Tablet to the apple juice to stop fermentation. Kegged to 40psi. 

OG of Apple Juice  1.035

FG 1.005

Calculated ABV 3.1%

Dextrose of 2 lbs adds 2.4% ABV

Plus 2 lbs of dextrose

Total ABV 5.5%

April 21 2014 - What I've learned is that the final product plays heavily on the quality and flavour of your apple juice. The results of this cider are fine. It tastes like a dry apple juice with a kick. With the sweetness gone the apple flavours are simple and not impressive. I stopped fermentation with Camden tablets and then added some original apple juice to sweeten this up a bit. Next time I would skip the Costco juice and head out to an orchard and get some freshly squeezed apple juice and add the yeast to it at the orchard. I would be looking for a darker juice that I liked the flavour to begin with. This is hogging a valuable keg. I hope it gets hot here soon so I can start serving this more.

May 24 2014 - Ok. Poured some from the keg the other night and I'd have to say the aging has improved this to what I would call a nice clean crisp cider. Nothing to write home about but still very good. A good friend gave me about 40 Martinelli's Sparking Apple Cider bottles. I will be bottling the keg today. 

Note: Interesting the bottle capper has reversible metal clampers which allow you to cap the larger Martinelli's bottles.