{"id":1474,"date":"2011-02-09T07:06:51","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T12:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=1474"},"modified":"2020-04-04T13:20:22","modified_gmt":"2020-04-04T17:20:22","slug":"a-to-z-brown-ale-aka-brownout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2011\/02\/09\/a-to-z-brown-ale-aka-brownout\/","title":{"rendered":"A to Z brown ale, AKA “Brownout”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve begun a bit of a project now that the massive new brew kettle is fully armed and operational.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve got Extreme Brewing<\/a> by Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery. I\u2019m going to make an effort to brew each of the recipes from the book at least once. This will likely take a few years \u2013 but I\u2019m in no particular hurry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s example is a brown ale. It\u2019s quite strong, perhaps 8% ABV \u2013 and is taking its own sweet time about carbonating. Still \u2013 it\u2019s a big and well balanced beer \u2013 and I think that most anyone who likes beer of any sort will like this one. Its codename is \u201cbrownout,\u201d for the brown ale, the rolling power outages of summer, and also for the vague feeling of \u201cwoah,\u201d that one might get from jumping straight in on 8% ABV beers. Not a full on blackout mind you \u2013 but still worth noticing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Down in the basement, I have my first real lager. It\u2019s the Peppercorn Rye Bock. The flaked rye was a massive pain to work with \u2013 yeilding a sort of gelatinous mass after extraction. The beer itself, however, smells great. It\u2019s perking along at 52 degrees on the floor of the basement. I expect to have to let it ferment in primary for another week and a half. After that I\u2019ll have to decide whether to do a secondary \u2013 or just bottle it. I\u2019m leaning towards just bottling it \u2013 assuming that I can get a clean siphon. It\u2019s got a lot of sludge on the bottom of the carboy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m also taking the opportunity to re-visit my whole brewing technique:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve already given up on fancy bottled water for my beer. I used to use only Poland Springs. Now, I use the city tap water. That\u2019s actually the source of my imprimatur: \u201cDorchester\u2019s Best.\u201d It\u2019s the tap water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the upgraded kettle, I can do \u201cfull\u201d boils. This just means that I boil four and a half to five gallons of wort for a five gallon recipe. My old pot held only five gallons, so a rolling five gallon boil in that thing would have been a sticky mess in no time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new pot has a built in thermometer, which means that I can finally ditch the floating one. This is an unconditional win \u2013 since I never really enjoyed the burns on my fingers from grabbing the damn thing out of the pot anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been using a small grain mill attachment for the kitchen aid mixer. It works okay, but I have to sort of hack it \u2013 since the thing is designed to produce flour, not cracked grain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I have a large metal \u201ctea ball\u201d that works wonderfully for whole leaf hops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still use the copper immersion chiller rather than waiting literally forever for a batch to cool down to pitching temperature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve begun a bit of a project now that the massive new brew kettle is fully armed and operational. I\u2019ve got Extreme Brewing by Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery. I\u2019m going to make an effort to brew each of the recipes from the book…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1475,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions\/1475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}