Back in the old days, when industrial brewers had less technology and worse malt to work with, they used a method called Parti-Gyle to extract as much of the sugar from their grains as possible. One technique that was used, is the Parti-Gyle. Essentially, brewers would mash their grains, and run off a certain amount of high-gravity wort, for use in something like a barley wine or a strong ale. Now, if you take a full batch-sparge session (where you rinse the grains a few times successively), the first third of of the wort you run off contains about half of …

I was checking on the wheat beer that I split and racked onto persimmons and black raspberries, and I noticed that there was some foam on top of a third fermentation vessel in the same closet. In that vessel, I had left a little wheat beer and slurry, onto which I poured a diluted black raspberry juice syrup. The first dilution was probably not thin enough, because the yeast did practically nothing, but when I diluted it further, the yeast still refused to act. So I did what the lazy man does: I left the quart jar of twice-diluted syrup …

Wednesday, I’ll be brewing a semi-familiar beer, my On a Jag Abbey Dubbel… except, I’m gonna get the volume right this time, damn it, and it will be a Dubbel, ie. maybe 6-7% alcohol. And, well, I’m going to use the Belgian Abbey I yeast (a little more estery), instead of Belgian Abbey II (not so estery). At least, that’s the plan, though I’ll be honest: I’ve mixed up my yeasts and I’m just going by what condition they’re in, now. (The smaller sample in rougher condition in my fridge is Belgian Abbey II, and the bigger sample in the …

So, let’s see. I have stuff to do this afternoon–an afternoon/dinner appointment I put off a bunch of times, but which I really need to keep today–but I swear, when I get home today, I will rack the Gentle Haejeok Oatmeal Stout to secondary to let it clear. I’ve promised a few people samples of the yeast, because it’s a famous one–“Cry Havoc,” the yeast used by homebrewing legend Charlie Papazian. (Who’s on Twitter, yo!) The neat thing about Cry Havoc is that it works as both an ale and a lager yeast, depending on the fermentation temperatures you choose …

I finally received the malt I ordered on Tuesday — not that I was impatiently waiting for it, but I was wondering when it would turn up. I now have a grand total of five kilos of wheat malt, four or five kilos of munich malt, and about twelve kilos of pilsner malt. (I should have gotten some Vienna, but I guess I didn’t think of it when I ordered it.) Tonight, I’ll be bottling my JAO (of which I nabbed a sample, and it’s pretty nice — I’m bottling most of it still, but one bottle carbed in a …

This is a SHaSY, which is a less catchy name for a beer than a SMaSH brew (Single Malt and Single Hop), but since I used a few different malts, I went with a Single Hop and Single Yeast. I’m fermenting with 100% Brettanomyces Clausenii, which is a nutsy yeast — it’s a dice roll with this thing, as far as my research suggests, though one can get great results. (Usually Brett is used as a secondary yeast, to get interesting effects because as an originally wild yeast it can ferment sugars that the various strains of Saccharomyces Cerevisae (“beer …