What, what?! I’ve been wanting to brew up a few experimental things, and in theory at least summer is when I have time. But this experiment is not a lone, mad-scientist experiment… no, it’s a collaborative experiment within my brewing community. No, not forcing people to hop for fifteen minutes, but rather, adding hops to a beer only in the last fifteen minutes of the boil. (Normally, we add hops at earlier stages too, but the end of the boil means more flavor and aroma, and if you add a lot of hops you can maximize those and still get …
Category: BEER & HOMEBREWING
Franco-Belgian Brewday: Wonmisan Raison (Rye Saison), and What I May Have Learned from Blending
Another day, another brewday. This one has a backstory, though. A while back, I tried to make a RyePA, which if you don’t know the substyle is simply an IPA — often an American IPA, as far as I can tell — that has a significant amount of rye malt in the grist. I was mashing in my brewpot/MLT setup, and the sparge got stuck, and it was hell… but it tasted pretty good nonetheless. Later, when I was kegging a batch of Saison, I realized I had an extra gallon of the stuff, but nowhere to put it. Meanwhile, …
Parti-Gyle Brewday: Wonmisan Oldboy & Wonmisan Fenian [Cookiejar] Raid
Yesterday was a big day for brewing stuff. Yesterday was the day to transfer Miss Jiwaku’s Old Ale to a keg to bulk age on cherries. That suggested that the optimal way to do it would be to rack the Old Ale onto however many Washington cherries I had on hand (which turned out to be the better part of 3 kilograms). I was faced with the question of what to do with the yeast cake from her Old Ale. While I realize that the Brett B. might have reproduced more, so that the blend is no longer at the …
Wonmisan’s Old Thin Man (Apple Cider)
A few weeks ago, my friend and former colleague did me a favor by picking up six gallons of apple juice from Costco, and finally I got the time to put it all into a carboy and dump the yeast in. The yeast, by the way, is Wyeast 4766, a common cider yeast. I call it the “Old Thin Man” because it’s not fortified, just apple juice and yeast. I don’t think that’s a mistake: I want to see what pure apple juice fermented tastes like. Well, as pure as commercial apple juice ever is, anyway. I don’t need it …
Racking and Racking
This morning was a fruitful one as far as racking various brews into kegs and such.
Steam Injection Brewing? (and some Belgian brewing links)
Good grief, this sounds cool. (There are more posts on the subject, too, of course, like this one, or these ones, over here, if you search around.) Like I said, it sounds cool, but a little hard to set up. Sometimes I wish I had a little stronger background with hardware and building stuff. I think I really would like to have a small steam-powered mash/boil setup. Also, here are some links connected to Belgian beer, which I’m posting here so I can find them again, but which others might appreciate too: I always forget to go and check out …
Belgian Brewday: Wonmisan Shiktakju
Shiktakju is probably a nonsensical word in Korean, but I like the sound of it nonetheless. Shiktak means table, specifically the kind of table at which one eats. The suffix -ju denotes a kind of alcohol. Now, normally, it’s appended to the stuff from which the alcohol is made — baemju is snake liquor (baem=snake), bokbunjaju is wild black raspberry liquor, maeshilju is plum liquor, and so on. So it may be that my usage is a nonsense coinage, but on the other hand, some liquors are named for other things. (I don’t know for sure the etymology of baeksaeju, …
Miss Jiwaku’s Holiday Stout / Holiday Old Ale
So Miss Jiwaku is taking a holiday from work, after leaving her last job. She said she wanted to try do at least one new thing a week, and I suggested that while she’s seen me brew up beers for a while now, she’s never done it herself. Why not try brewing a beer? We talked a bit about possible styles and flavors and so on, and she settled upon a stout. At which point I started formulating the recipe, and figured that given her love of lightly and strongly soured beers alike (she’s crazy about Duchess de Bourgogne and …
Spicing for a Belgian Wit
Okay, so, I am now facing the reality that I probably (significantly) overspiced my Belgian Wit, and in exactly the way I didn’t want to — bitterness. Not because of hops: I put in an ounce of Hallertau, which gets me close to (but definitely under) 20 IBUs. That’s fine and well within style for a Wit. But the problem is the orange peel. I had left my copy of Stan Hieronymous’ Brewing With Wheat in my office (though I didn’t realize that was where it was) and ended up discovering this fact today. So I had a look at …
Belgian Brewday: Wonmisan Wit
Today is my first attempt at a Belgian Wit. I’ve only had one example of the style, the inoffensive Hoegaarden Wit available in Korea. (I’m told it is brewed locally, or somewhere in the region, not in Belgium. It’s not bad, it’s just… well, not all that wheaty, or distinctive, or striking.) I’m making my first attempt using the Forbidden Fruit yeast, about which I’ve heard wonderful things. The other interesting thing you might notice if you look at the recipe (it’s set for a double batch but I’m doing a single batch today) is that I’m attempting is the …