Fat Tire Amber Ale Beer Recipe

 

 

Fat Tire Amber Ale
(5 gallons, extract with grains)  

Ingredients: 

5 lbs. Laaglander plain extra-light

DME 
.50 lb. crystal malt (20° Lovibond) 
.50 lb. crystal malt (40° Lovibond) 
.50 lb. carapils malt 
.50 lb. Munich malt 
.50 lb. biscuit malt 
.50 lb. chocolate malt 
3 AAUs Willamette pellet hops (0.66 oz. at 4.5% alpha acid) 
1.33 AAUs Fuggle pellet hops (0.33 oz. at 4% alpha acid) 
2 AAUs Fuggle pellet hops (0.50 oz. at 4% alpha acid) 
1 tsp. Irish moss 
2/3 to 3/4 cup corn sugar to prime 
Wyeast 1056 or BrewTek CL-10

Step by step:

Steep specialty grains in 3 gallons of water at 154° F for 45 minutes. Remove grains and add dried malt extract. Bring to boil and add 0.66 oz. Willamette pellet hops. Boil for 60 minutes and add Irish moss. Boil 10 minutes and then add 0.50 oz. Fuggle hops. Boil another 20 minutes, add remaining Fuggles and remove from heat. Cool to about 70° F and transfer to fermenting vessel with yeast. Ferment at 64° to 68° F until complete (7 to 10 days), then transfer to a secondary vessel, or rack into bottles or keg with corn sugar. (Try lowering the amount of priming sugar to mimic the low carbonation level of Fat Tire.) Lay the beer down for at least a few months to mellow and mature for best results.
 

All-grain option: Omit extract and mash 6 lbs. pale malt with specialty malts in 9 quarts of water to get a single infusion mash temperature of 154° F for 45 minutes. Sparge with hot water of 170° F or more to get 5.5 gallons of wort. Bring to boil and use above hopping and fermentation schedule.
OG = 1.050 
FG = 1.011 
IBUs = 16 

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May 6th, 2008 | Posted in Beer Recipes | 3 Comments

Blending Wine

Right about now is the time that most home winemakers begin to open bottles of wine made last year. Will it taste good, average or excellent? If it is just average, could I added something to it to make it better? What if I mix a little blueberry wine with the concord wine? A thinned bodied, with a full bodied? These are just some of the questions you run into whenever you decide to blend your wines.

 

 
Blending wines is a combination of math and art. You can calculate how much of each wine to blend by using the Pearson Square or you can can do it the artsy way. Personally, I prefer the artsy way, that is taking a little of wine A and mix it with a little of wine B until I get the taste I am looking for. Let me give you an example. I made a concord wine from grapes in 2004 that had great taste by was very thinned bodied. I made a blueberry wine from canned blueberries in early 2005 that was more full bodied. So, I said to myself “What if I blend these two wines?” I started out with 2 small glasses, filled one with blueberry and one with concord and then pour the 2 glasses into a larger glass. Then the fun part, tasting the blend. It was better, but not good enough. So then it was 3 glasses, first 2 blueberry and then 1 concord. The mixing continued until I found the taste I was looking for, which I believe was 1 blueberry to 2 concord.

 

 
For you math types, here is the Pearson Square. This example was taken from Grapestompers website.

 

 
The easiest way to illustrate how the Pearson Square works is to do an example…. 

For our illustration, let’s say we are blending because we would like to lower the level of alcohol in our wine. We have some Merlot that is 15% alcohol, and we would like to blend it with another wine so we end up with a target alcohol of 12%. The other wine’s alcoholic content is 11%. 

Let’s begin by showing you what the Pearson Square looks like. See the figure below: 

Pearson Square 

The center of the square, shown by the letter “C”, represents the “target” value we want to blend for (in this case, we want to obtain a wine of 12% alcohol). 

The upper left corner, shown by the letter “A”, represents the known alcohol percentage of wine #1 (Our Merlot, which is 15%). 

The lower left corner, shown by the letter “D”, represents the known alcohol percentage of wine #2 (another Merlot, which is 11%) 

To use the Pearson Square, we merely substitute numbers for the letters in the diagram, and then do some simple subtraction. We find the difference between the values in the corner and the center “target” value, and place the answer in the opposite corners. This value is always the absolute value (no negative numbers allowed!) of the difference…. so, for our example: 

15 minus 12 equals 3, and
12 minus 11 equals 1 

Here’s what the Pearson Square looks like now: 

Pearson Square - Example calculations 

Voila! As you can see, we need 3 parts of the 11% wine to mix with 1 part of the 15% wine, and we will end up with our “target” wine of 12%. Pretty neat, huh? 

There are other things to consider when blending wines. Such as, not blending a bad wine with a good wine, balancing tannins etc. The following links make great reads for exploring more about blending. 

Blending Wines: Grapestompers 

Blending Batches - Tips from the Pros: Winemaker Magazine 

Blending to Improve Wines: Winemaker Magazine 

April 30th, 2008 | Posted in Wine | No Comments

Bitburger Recipe

I like to use different resources whenever I’m looking for beer recipes. This recipe is from Brew Your Own magazine and was orginally published in November 2000.

 

Bitburger Pils Clone
by Scott Russell
Ahh, Bitburger. It’s a long-time favorite of U.S. servicemen stationed in Germany. This beer is made in the town of Bitburg in the Eifel Lake region of Germany’s Rhineland. Bright gold in color, with a flashy carbonation and lasting pearly-white head, “Bit” is a classic northern German and Scandinavian style pilsner. All-malt Bitburger uses a proprietary yeast strain that gives the beer a super-clean finish.

I also had difficulty getting information from the brewery. They would only tell me that they use deep well water, their own yeast, summer barley, Hallertau and local hops. We can guess at Bitburger’s recipe and brewing process. Some German pilsners use a decoction mash procedure. I include a simple step-mash procedure for all-grain brewers who aren’t ready to tackle decoction mashing. For those who are, see “Starter Guide to Decoction Mashing” (BYO, October 1997) or “New Brewing Lager Beer” by Greg Noonan (Brewers’ Publications, 1996) for the best general explanation of this procedure.

Fermentation takes place at cold temperatures (45° to 50° F). The beer is then lagered at near-freezing temperatures (33° to 35° F) for three months or so.

Bitburger Premium

(5 gallons, extract and steeping grains)

OG = 1.045 FG = 1.008 IBU = 38

Ingredients

1 lb. carapils malt
6 lbs. Muntons extra-light malt extract syrup
6 AAU Perle hops (0.75 oz. at 8% alpha acid)
6 AAU Hallertau hops (1.5 oz. at 4% alpha acid)
German lager or pilsner yeast (Wyeast 2007 or White Labs WLP830)
7/8 cup corn sugar for priming

Step by Step

Steep the carapils (cracked) in a grain bag in 3 gallons of water at 150° F for 45 minutes. Remove grains, add malt extract and stir well. Bring to a boil, add Perle hops, boil 45 minutes. Add 4 AAU Hallertau hops, boil 40 minutes. Add remaining 2 AAU Hallertau, boil 5 minutes. Remove from heat, remove hops.

Cool and top up to 5.25 gallons with pre-boiled, chilled water. At 68° F, pitch yeast. Ferment at 68° F for two days, or until bubbling is sustained. Move fermenter to cooler location, near 50° F, and continue primary fermentation for seven days. Rack to secondary and lager at 35° to 38° F, for six weeks. Warm up to room temperature for a day, prime with corn sugar and bottle. Bottle condition warm for two days, then lager in bottles at 38° to 40° F for four to six weeks.

All-grain option

Crack 1 lb. carapils and 7 lbs. lager malt. Heat 8 quarts water to 136° F, mix in grains and hold at 127° F for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, heat 5 more quarts to 165° F, add after the 30 minutes are up and hold mash at 150° F for 60 minutes longer.

Sparge with 16 quarts at 168° F and proceed from boiling, timing your boil to reduce volume to 5.25 gallons (add more water to the kettle during the boil, if necessary).

Partial-mash option

Mash 1 lb. carapils and 3.5 lbs. lager malt in 6 quarts at 127° F (heat to 136° F) for 30 minutes. Raise temperature to 150° F by adding 3 quarts at 165° F, hold 60 minutes. Sparge with 12 quarts at 168° F. Add 3 lbs. malt extract, proceed as above from boiling.

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April 21st, 2008 | Posted in Beer Recipes | No Comments

4 Tips on Making Your First Wine

 

Making your first wine can either be a pleasure or a chore. Here are 4 tips to make your first winemaking experience a pleasure.

Use Juice - forget about crushing grapes or any other fruit, buy juice instead. Frozen Welch’s works great because it has no preservatives.

Start Small - Don’t decide to make a large batch of wine at one time. Instead work at making a gallon or two. Small batches are easy to make and clean up. Besides, making a lot of 1 gallon batches gets you more experience instead of 1 large batch.

Use Kitchenware - Instead of going out and buying tons of new equipment, use kitchenware instead. A new trash can makes a great fermenter. Just make sure it’s new, clean and sanitized. Plastic spoons, measuring cups, and measuring spoons can be easily found in most kitchens and will keep your expenses down.

Have Patience - It takes about 4 months before you can even think about drinking your wine. So kick back and wait. Most new wine after a month will taste pretty raw and nasty, so don’t rush it.

There 4 tips on making your first winemaking experience a pleasure instead of a chore.

 

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April 16th, 2008 | Posted in Wine | No Comments

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