Prince of Fatness
The kitchen is done enough. Just need a back splash and lighting redone. So, I brewed last night. It's good to be back on the horse.
Peat Heavy
5.5 lb Golden Promise
1 lb Light Munich Malt
8 oz Peat Smoked Malt
2 oz Roasted Barley
.5 oz Mt Hood Hops (5.5% AA) 60 mins
Safale US-05 Dry Yeast - no starter
Mash 154 degrees for 60 minutes. Take two quarts of the first runnings and boil down separately to the consistency of maple syrup. Should be about a pint. Add that back into the main boil with 10 minutes left. 60 minute boil. Chill and pitch yeast.
This is my standard Scottish Ale recipe, except this time I wanted to try out some peat smoked malt. In reading up on this there is all sorts of caution to be conservative with it. But, I did find some that were aggressive and liked the results. They went about a pound for a 5 gallon batch. The malt smells wonderful. When I tasted right before pitching it was very sweet but I could detect the peat. I don't think that the peat will be overbearing once it ferments out. I like smoked beers and Islay Scotch so I think that it will be good.
I took a spoonful of the boiled down runnings. So. Damn. Good.
OG was 1.069
Not at it at all.
I also read the part on roasting regular potatoes. Boil with a little vinegar then roast. Hmm. I have some fresh spuds that I just dug up last weekend. May have to give that a shot this weekend.
I roasted up some potatoes for dinner yesterday. They got nice and crispy outside but stayed pretty moist inside. Delicious.
Brewing a 5 gallon batch of beer this weekend in the garage.
Bitter Sweet Potato Head
10 lbs Maris Otter
6 lbs Sweet Potatoes (add to mash) *
East Kent Golding hops
1/2 oz first wort
1/2 oz 60 min
1/2 oz 30 min
1/2 oz 15 min
1/2 oz 5 min
1 oz flameout
Danstar Windsor Dry Yeast (no starter)
Mash for an hour at 150. Boil for an hour. Chill and pitch yeast. Ferment for ~3 weeks then package. Low carbonation is key for this style
To prepare the sweet potatoes (yesterday) I roasted them whole. After that I peeled them (easy once they are roasted) and pureed them. By roasting them whole they were still rather moist inside. I did not lose much.
There is a lot of puree. Will be interesting to see how the sparge goes. I will have my grain bag ready.
Feeling the growl again
Low carbonation is key for this style
Beer mile beer
Sounds tasty
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
Beer mile beer Sounds tasty
The problem with bitters for the beer mile is that they are usually under 5%. Not sure what this one will be. Depends on how much sugar I get out of the potatoes. From what I have read I should expect as much sugar from 5 lbs of sweet potatoes as I would get from 1 lb of grain. Guessing around 4.5 to 5%.
The big thing that I am looking for is what kind of flavor I get from the sweet potatoes. I am hoping to get some but may not. This is why I am not using any specialty grains or spices. Worst case it's a plain old easy drinking bitter.
When I opened the valve on the cooler nothing came out, so I went right to Plan B, grain bag. With all of that puree in there the grain mass felt like a rubber ball in the bag. We really had to squeeze to get the wort out. And it was hot!. It took us a while but we got through it. To speed things up I did one big sparge instead of the usual two. I didn't get much yam in the sample but most others said that they did. Definitely has an orange hue to it.
Upgraded: Sort of Broken
grated sweet potatoes it is next time?
Chill, be mellow, and be in a mood for embracing the sun.
"ooohhh, what is the malted liquor, what gets you drunker quicker, what comes in bottles or in cans?BEER!"
That would certainly solve the sparging issue, but then I would doubt that you would get much flavor from the sweet potatoes. Roasting gives the best chance there I think. I could just gently mash them some instead of pureeing them. When I added the puree to the mash it dissolved into the liquid almost immediately, What would have been ideal would have been a sturdy false bottom. Then I could have just pressed down on the bag. As it is one person had to hold the bag up while another squeezed. To be honest it was not that bad of an ordeal. Gotta taste it when I bottle to see if it is worth doing again.
When we were done sparging, the spent grains and sweet potatoes looked like play-doh. My neighbor took them and is going to make dog biscuits out of them. I imagine that their dog will really enjoy them.
Good Bad & The Monkey
home brewed hot sauce...
Spontaneously fermented hot peppers and garlic, fermenting in brine and now aged in a whiskey barrel, to be pureed into a sriracha when ready.
I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.
Poor baby
Peat Heavy 8 oz Peat Smoked Malt
Bottled this up last night. The peat smoked malt is definitely noticeable. It balances out the sweetness. This taste may not be for everyone but I like it. FG 1.014 giving me an ABV of 7.2%.
what makes it sriracha instead of cajun (louisiana, cystal, tabasco) hot sauce?
home brewed hot sauce... Spontaneously fermented hot peppers and garlic, fermenting in brine and now aged in a whiskey barrel, to be pureed into a sriracha when ready.
That most of the vegetal mass stays in, the ores eve of garlic and the fact that it is fermented.
BTW, the barrel popped a small leak today. I had to move the contents out. Smells funky yummy.
OK so I bottled this up last night. Some of the sweet potato puree made it into the fermenter because there was quite a bit of slurry in the bottom of the bucket. I could not siphon it all and I consequently came up about a 6 pack short. I suppose that I could have cold crashed it before bottling. I suspect that once refrigerated I will notice a lot of sediment in the bottom of the bottles. The beer was very cloudy.
Anyway, I could not detect all that much flavor from the sweet potatoes. I am concluding that it is very difficult to get any flavor from them no matter what you do (not surprised by this). Puree is a no go as it makes it difficult to work with the wort throughout the process. Since I believe that pureeing roasted sweet potatoes is probably the best chance of getting any flavor I don't feel that anything short of that, while easier to work with, is worth the time.
I do not regret doing this but it is not worth trying again. You don't know unless you try. It's not a total waste as the sample was tasty. If nothing else it's a nice British Pale.
You could have fermented with Brett,w which would have eaten up some of the raw potato starches and released flavor.
But then you'd have to ferment with Brett.