Beltway Brewery

Wrye Wit #2

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:02:00 +0000

Remember how last time I said this had to be the best beer ever before I'd brew it again?

About that.

Everywhere I've brought this beer, it's been a huge hit until suddenly I realized I didn't have anymore. So today I brewed it up again with some minor tweaks - instead of half flaked rye and half malted rye, I went with all rye malt, which made the sparging much easier - the malting process helps break down the beta glucans that make rye so sticky.

Hopefully it turns out as well this time!

Brand New Spawn

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:46:00 +0000

My friend Allan and his wife just had a new son, who they named Paul. In trying to come up with ideas for a beer to brew for this new son, I turned to the Apostle Paul, which led to this recipe, that I'm calling Paul's Road to Damascus.

8 lbs Pilsner
1 lbs Munich
1 lbs Date syrup
1 lbs Orange Blossom Honey
8 oz Aromatic
8 oz Caramunich
8 oz Special B

Estimated OG around 1.070, although I'm not really sure how much contribution date syrup will give me until I buy a bottle and look at it. A half ounce of 18.5% AA Summit will put me at about 19 IBUs. Also thinking to put some damascene spices lightly in the end, and fermenting with WLP550.

Summit Saison Update

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:57:00 +0000

With fermentation going, I've added 13 ounces of regular table sugar to the beer. This should increase the gravity about 7 points, bringing it up to 1.068. I'll probably pitch some champagne yeast tomorrow or so.

Summit Saison

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:30:00 +0000

Ever since I first tried my friend CJ's summit APA, the only thing I could think about was how much I wanted to use those hops in a saison. So I did.

Recipe was pretty straightforward - mostly pilsner with a little munich and wheat thrown in for good measure. Hopping additions at 60, 10, and 0 (.25 oz, 1 oz, and 1 oz respectively - those Summit hops are potent for bittering) to give it some flavor and aroma. Going to add some plain table sugar after fermentation gets going a bit to push things along and if fermentation slows before I'm ready for it to quit, I've got my champagne yeast ready.

Normally, I'd never put champagne yeast in a beer, but since saisons are great super dry, I'm okay with it for this. I really just want the saison yeast to impart enough flavor to be recognizably a saison, and since most of that type of activity happens at the beginning of the yeast life cycle, I don't really have any reservations about giving them a push towards the end.

Lacking a heating blanket, I'm considering the use of a space heater to give the yeast that little extra warmth it craves, but then I have to also live in the same place as said yeast, and I sure don't appreciate the heat. I've run the AC in winter to make the yeast happy, but I don't think I can run heat in DC's summer.

OG: 1.061 (plus whatever contribution from the sugar), IBUs: roundabout 32.

Came in at about 78% efficiency, which is pretty standard for me, although I had calculated the recipe at 70% because I am stupid sometimes.

RSS Feed

noreply@blogger.com (Half Pint) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:17:00 +0000

I understand that our RSS feed was not working before, I believe we have fixed that now.

Purple Pilsner - Round Two

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 22:12:00 +0000

I don't think I posted about the first time I tried to do this beer - it predated this blog by a bit. A buddy of mine had a baby girl he named Violet, so I got a hankering to try out the black rice mentioned in Radical Brewing that mentioned a purple color. I used a pound of it in a straight pils and while it was purple-ish in the fermenter, it came across more as gold in the glass. Tasted great, but the look was wrong.

So I decided to try again. I wanted to increase the amount of black rice I was going to use, so I also increased the gravity overall to compensate for the simplicity of rice in the grainbill. I also boiled some beets in the mash liquor before adding it in, to get a little more color that way. It came out pretty significantly purple, although more lavender-like than a royal purple. OG came in at 1.066. I took some pictures when I was moving it from its overnight chilling vessel into the carboy, but they don't really do it any justice, so I'm going to wait to show anything until the finished product can be put in a glass.

Grainbill was pretty simple - 11 pounds pilsner malt, 2.5 lbs black rice. I doubt the beets contributed much - it was about 7 beets in a total of about 7 gallons. I hopped it to about 40 IBUs with some 18.5% AA Summit hops, then a .5 oz addition at 10 minutes of the same hops, and a 1 oz addition at flameout. Repitched the White Labs German Lager yeast that I've used now in my second pilsner, then a schwarzbier. This is probably the last go-round for this yeast, it darkened significantly from the schwarz and the purple from this beer probably won't do anything to help that.

The Naming of Beers

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:28:00 +0000

I've been thinking about the naming of beers, and the dork in me keeps wanting to come out (it doesn't take much for it to break through the thin veneer of normality).

Right now I've been kicking around the idea of naming each beer as though it were an actual family member, mostly started by me wanting to have a Crazy Uncle Aaron's Seasonal Special. I could have a barleywine named Grandpa X's Old Something, or something. And a Brother David Abbey Something for a dubbel. I figure through this I could get a Grandpa, Grandma, Father, Mother, Uncle, Aunt, Brother, Sister, and Cousin without getting too strained. I may have to play with it a little more, but mostly I wanted to record the thought before it got lost in the maelstrom of monotony.

APA Round 3

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:27:00 +0000

Brewed APA again, this time switching it up a little bit. Typically I brew this beer (like all my beers) with pilsner as the base malt, but I decided to do it different and am using marris otter for the base.

I mashed in at 154 around 2:30 with 3.5 gallons of water and let sit until 3:40, at which point I sparged with 6 gallons of additional water. Collected about 7.5 gallons of sweet liquor and put 6.5g in my kettle (I miscalculated my sparge water - factoring in a system loss that I don't experience).

Boiled for 60 minutes with hop additions at 60, 10, and flameout, then pitched a full sachet of rehydrated US-05 to ferment.

OG: 1.054 at 5 gallons.

Lots of Updates!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:26:00 +0000

Whew, so, okay. A lot has happened.

I guess we'll start with how the Wrye Wit and the Belgian Mild came out. The Wit has been a huge success - I've brought it to a few parties, and people have been asking for it. I'm pretty happy about that - it was a PITA to brew, but I suppose I'll have to do another batch of it in the future. The Belgian Mild has been a disappointment for me - I wanted something much maltier and ester-y-ier. It's drinkable, but not exciting. I do, however, like the yeast I ended up using (WLP550) and will use it again on the next attempt at it. The problem I'm having with it is I want to develop the esters without overattenuating the beer. I attempted to do that on the first batch by not aerating the beer at all, but that didn't work. Heat would boost both ester production and attenuation, so it's a non-starter. It requires more thought before I'm ready to go again on it.

I also put together Reds #4, 5, and 6, as well as a second Pilsener and now a Schwarzbier is in the fermenter.

Red 4 was an experiment in doubling the crystal malt that I had used previously in Reds 3 and 3.01 - still a bit too early to tell, but I think it's come out okay.

I went to bottle Red 5 today and discovered it to be growing mold on the surface of the beer - alas to our fallen brethren. I've read you can skim the mold off and proceed, but that doesn't sit real well with me from a food safety standpoint, so I ended up pouring it down the drain. This was the red with a scottish ale grain bill, so I took a bit off the bottom to sample and it tasted good - I'll have to brew it again sans mold.

Red 6 has also been bottled - this is essentially the same grain bill as Red 3, but with more crystal malt and the addition of oats to try and thicken the body. We'll see how it comes out.

Also, Red 2 had been developing a bit of a lactic character for a while now, which I was enjoying, so I let it run with that... and then they started blowing up. I saved a few in the fridge to share with some people, but ended up dumping the rest in the interest of not dying.

At the moment, I'm sitting on 11.5 cases of bottled beer. Anyone wanna party?

Belgian Mild - Brewday

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:35:00 +0000

This is one I've been thinking about doing for a while - a mild ale, treated like an english mild, but brewed with exclusively belgian malts and fermented with a belgian yeast. I realize there is already something similar, called patersbier, but I think it's a little different than what I'm doing. Maybe not, reliable information on the beer seems to be pretty scarce. Anyway, brewed mine up today, so we'll see how it comes out in a week or two.

The recipe ended up as:

6# Pilsener
8 oz Caramunich
6 oz Special B
4 oz Biscuit

1 oz of 3% Liberty hops for 60 minutes.

I wanted to use WLP500, but MDHB was out, so I went with WLP550. Mashed at 155 for 60 minutes, put a total of 6 gallons into the kettle (had to end the runoff early, as I overestimated my water). Ended up with a little over 5 gallons and an OG of 1.044 - about 80% efficiency, which sucked. I've been running with a 75% efficiency assumption, but I keep getting 77-78, so I may have to just adjust to that instead. Still, even at 1.044, it's passable as a mild. Hopefully it'll taste good!

Pilsener #101 - Brewday

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:22:00 +0000

Just put the Pilsener in the lagering fridge. It's going to sit overnight in there at 50 degrees, then I'll siphon off the trub and pitch my yeast, in this case German Lager Yeast WLP830. Last time I used WLP 840 American Lager Yeast, but MDHB was out of it, so hey.

I ended up mashing in with 4 gallons to 9.5 lbs of grain (1.68 qt/lbs ratio) and holding at 151 for just over an hour, then double batch sparging with another 4 gallons to put a total of 6.7 gallons with a gravity of 1.044 into the kettle. Boiled for an hour with three hop additions and finished with about 5.3 gallons at 1.052. I only had space for 5 gallons in my overnight bucket, so a bit went down the drain along with a bunch of trub. I'll put the starter in the fridge tonight and probably pitch the yeast tomorrow night.

Efficiency ended up at 78%, and I love my mash tun.

Red 4 - Brewday

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:19:00 +0000

Just brewed up a pilot batch of Red #4. A couple of people said they didn't like how Red 3.01 came out, so I'm piloting an increased amount of crystal malt in the beer to see how I like it. It was a 3 gallon batch with a pound of crystal malt, which roughly translates to 2 pounds of crystal in a full batch. The OG came in at 1.052, giving me an efficiency of 71% - a little lower than usual, but within acceptable range.

This was also the first test of my system doing a half batch - something I want to do more of, so I'm pleased it came out alright. I may start using a no sparge technique on half batches, mostly to increase the grain bed depth, but this efficiency was alright enough that I'm not too concerned about it.

Tune in on Monday for the bottling of the Wrye Wit and the brewing of Pilsener 101!

Arabic Coffee Porter - Bottled

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:07:00 +0000

Bottled the Arabic Coffee Porter. I ended up adding about a cup of strong brewed coffee to the bucket, but no additional cardamom, even though I created a spice tea for emergency additions.

The final gravity came to 1.020, giving me a low attenuation of about 63% and an abv of 4.75%. The low attenuation concerns me a little, but we'll let it ride. Primed with 3 ounces of sugar for a little over 2 volumes of CO2.

Tough to tell a lot about it at this point, but it's got significant cardamom flavor and noticeable coffee. I want to see how it all balances out once it's carbed up before passing any sort of judgment.

Wrye Wit

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:21:00 +0000

Posted the recipe earlier, but here's the rundown on the session: it sucked.

Never worked with rye before, and even with a pound of rice hulls, things did not go smoothly. I mashed in with 3.5 gallons and ended up having to add another one. Rest at 155 for 80 minutes, then sparged with 4.5 gallons.

And I only collected 5 gallons going into the kettle because I got tired of dealing with stuck/slow runoff. The gravity ended up at 1.054, and this had better be the best beer ever, or I'm probably never going to brew it again!

Dante's Inferno IPA - Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:32:00 +0000

While brewing, I decided to open and taste a bottle of Dante's Inferno IPA - a smoked chipotle IPA I brewed last summer in honor of my friend's son. Who he named Dante. A couple years ago.

Okay, so it was a thin excuse to brew something weird, but it worked.

I poured down the side of the glass for this one, which is something I don't usually do, as a friend I had given a bottle to warned me it had gushed on him. I'm pretty sure he was confused, as I got no gushing, and minimal head at best.

I can smell hops in the aroma, but not much else. First taste, it tastes like a mild IPA (it's had a few months of aging, so the hoppiness has faded), with maybe a hint of smoke on the palate and a brush of chipotle in the back of the throat.

One of those characteristics I'm happy with. I only used a pound of smoked malt in the recipe, and even at bottling was incredibly disappointed with that. I tried to commit the cardinal sin and supplement it with liquid smoke, but even that doesn't seem to have made much of a dent.

Compared to a regular IPA, I guess it's a little smokey. Compared to a smoked beer, it's maybe just bummed it's first cigarette from a stranger in a parking lot and bum puffed its way through it, trying to look cool.

Still, I'm kind of intrigued at the potential it has. As I get to the middle of the glass, the smoke is getting more evident - maybe it just needed to warm up a little to gets the internal combustion engine of flavor revved up.

The color is great and the clarity brilliant, although having spent the last three or four months in my fridge has probably helped with the latter.

I guess I'd mark it down as not bad, but needs improvement. The chipotle character is exactly right, the smoke is low. Don't know if I'll rebrew it anytime soon, but maybe.

Porter Update & New Beer!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:02:00 +0000

With primary fermentation having settled a bit, just added 1/2 cup of whole french roast coffee beans to the Arabic Coffee Porter. I expect to add both more coffee and cardamom later, but these additions should give me a starting point.

At the same time, I've just begun the mash on my Wrye Wit (it's a witbier with rye instead of wheat - get it?!). I mashed in with only 7 gallons and it's looking really thick, so I've begun heating some additional water to add to it. Maybe those rice hulls absorb more water than their barley equivalents?

Speak of rice hulls, here's the recipe for the wit:

4.5 lbs Pilsner malt
2 lbs Rye malt
2 lbs Flaked Rye
1 lb Flaked Oats
.25 lbs Munich malt

I'm going to hop it with 1 oz of 4% Hallertauer for 60 minutes, then add 2 tablespoons of bitter orange marmalade and .5 ounce of crushed coriander with 5 minutes left.

Full details post brewing.

Arabic Coffee Porter - Brewday

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:09:00 +0000

Just finished putting the arabic coffee porter to bed. The yeast haven't woken up to do their work just yet, but I'm confident they will.

The recipe ended up being:
7 lbs of Pilsner malt
1 lb of Brown malt
8 oz of Crystal 40L
8 oz of Crystal 60L
8 oz of Pale Chocolate malt

Mashed at 155 for 80 minutes

1 ounce of 5% Fuggles at 60 minutes
.5 ounce of 5% Fuggles at 10 minutes
.5 ounce of crushed green cardamom at 10 minutes

Pitched one packet of rehydrated US-05

The original gravity ended up at 1.056, which puts my efficiency at 82%, which is better than I usually get, but not so drastically as to throw the beer concept off.

It developed a nice cardamom aroma during the end of boil, but I'm expecting to add a cardamom tea along with some coffee later to bring that all up after fermentation. This first addition is really just to set a foundation.

All in all, it looks, tastes, and smells like a nice beer so far.

Here's a shiny picture of wort collection during the mash:

Arabic Coffee Porter

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:25:00 +0000

I'm planning this one for an upcoming brew session (hopefully tomorrow).

For those of you who don't know, arabic coffee on the arabian gulf is very different from how many perceive it. I tend to think of the divide as arabic coffee and turkish coffee, and while I love both, this beer is aimed at the former. Gulf arabic coffee is somewhat tea-like, lighter and gentler, and spiced with cardamom.

That's pretty much where I'm thinking to take this beer - a pretty straightforward porter (for the first iteration, I'm going to be using Jamil Zainasheff's as a base, with no alterations except for system and scaling), and adding an undecided amount of coffee and cardamom to the beer.

I'm likely going to add both the coffee and the cardamom in several different ways, as I've found in the past multiple methods of addition tend to give a more balanced flavor presentation. If I brew tomorrow, I'll update with the actual recipe and amounts used, although some, if not all, of the coffee and cardamom adding will happen post-fermentation.

Bottling!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:34:00 +0000

Bottled two batches today: 5.1 gallons of Red 3.01 and 4.5 gallons of APA 1.01.

As you can probably tell from the version control numbers, both are variations on previous batches - refinements if you will.

Red 3.01 varies from its predecessor Red 3 in that it uses East Kent Goldings hops instead of Liberty, and was mashed at a slightly higher temperature (154 instead of 151). I'm hoping this will address some of the body issues it suffered from previously. It had an original gravity of 1.056 and a final gravity of 1.017, giving it an ABV of 5.1%. I primed it with 3 ounces of dextrose, aiming for about 2.1 volumes of CO2.

APA 1.01 varies from its predecessor in that I decided to FWH for the first time ever. That's pretty much it. It had an original gravity of 1.062 and a final gravity of 1.015, giving it an ABV of 6.2%. I primed with 3.5 ounces of dextrose, aiming for about 2.3 volumes of CO2.

I had run out of whirfloc when brewing Red 3.01, and it's got a pronounced haze that makes me sad. Hopefully she can make up for it with a great personality.

APA 1.01, however, will suffer through no misfortune in life. She looks gorgeous, like the prettiest belle at the ball. My only concern is how the FWH will turn out - will she be beautiful, but vacuous? Only time will tell. And by time, I mean a couple of weeks for bottle conditioning to take hold, whereupon I will ravish them both mercilessly.

Return from Hibernation

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:48:00 +0000

Well, not much has been happening on this front for a week or so. My heat has been out since Saturday, and for those of you not in the DC Metro area - it's been really freaking cold here lately. It's pretty tough to force yourself to do anything except stay warm when it's 40 degrees indoors.

I'm positing switching up my brewing schedule to emphasize frequency of batches instead of my usual approach which is very laidback and time insensitive.

Generally, I let my beer sit in primary for about 4 weeks then I bottle it, which means it's at least 6 weeks before I know how the batch came out, and it's fairly pointless to tweak a batch with inconclusive results. I'm considering changing to doing half-batches twice as often - instead of 5 gallons and a 6 week schedule, 2.5 gallons every 4 weeks (bottle after 2, condition for 2). Lagers, of course, will take longer.

Essentially I could put in place a rotation of brews, eventually bottling and brewing on the same day:

Week 1: Bottle #3, Brew #1
Week 2: Bottle #4, Brew #2
Week 3: Bottle #1, Brew beer #3
Week 4: Bottle #2, Brew #4

This schedule is pretty intensive with a full time job, but bottling a half batch should only take about an hour instead of the usual two, and I could do the bottling during the mash.

I only have two concerns with this approach: my mash tun makes it difficult to do low gravity beers already (a half batch of low gravity beer will give me essentially no grain bed to work with), and lagers will throw this schedule out of whack.

I'll have to ponder solutions to this problem.

In the beginning...

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:47:00 +0000

The Beltway Brewery is the brainchild of two brains that should never have been permitted to have children. Nevertheless, the pursuit of good, local beer has led us to this place - the beginning. Attempting to start a brewery from scratch is not easy, but we're trying.

Right now we're working primarily on fine-tuning some of the recipes that we hope will constitute the regular, year-round offerings of the brewery, and will follow up with more information about those iterations and their histories later.