Brew #31: Festive Spice

This weekend we’re having our friend Evan over to take part in an introduction to allgrain brewing session as well as to drink some of the brew I’ve got kegged.. Evan is a fairly new brewer so I’m hoping I might be able to help him fine tune his process a little more. The plan is to brew the batch, chill it, pitch the yeast, and send it home for Evan to ferment and bottle over the next 3 or 4 weeks. I can’t wait to see how it turns out, I love a good spice beer and this recipe has some good potential.

Festive Spice
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Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Spice Beer
Batch: 5.00 gal, Mashed

Characteristics
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Recipe Gravity: 1.057 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 26 IBU
Recipe Color: 12° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.014
Alcohol by Volume: 5.7%
Alcohol by Weight: 4.4%

Ingredients
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American two-row 6.00 lb, mashed
Crystal 40L 0.75 lb, mashed
German vienna 3.00 lb, mashed
German Munich 0.50 lb, mashed
American black patent 0.10 lb, mashed

Kent Golding 1.00 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Kent Golding 0.50 oz, whole, 30 minutes
Kent Golding 0.50 oz, whole, 0 minutes

Cardamon 1.00 unit, 1tsp
Ginger root 1.00 unit, 1oz chopped (approx)
Cinnamon 1.00 unit, 1/2tsp (approx)
Allspice 1.00 unit, 1tsp (approx)

California ale yeast

Notes
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Recipe Notes:
I researched and put together this spice beer as an introduction to allgrain brewing with a buddy Evan. I was shooting for a red colored ale with a mild hop and spice character.. should be easy drinkin’. Mash at 154f for 60m.

Batch Notes:

edit: 12/3: Didn’t brew this last weekend as I torqued my back while installing laminate flooring.. postponing this one for the near future.

12/15 : brewed up this batch today, Evan and I will be doing a brew sometime in January and I needed to get this brew done so the grain didn’t “go bad”.. anyway, OG was 1.055 … tastes pretty damn good and smells almost just like pumpkin pie!

1/6 : Been carbonating at 25psi for the past week or so… time to pull off a pint to taste! Carbonation is great, a nice stable white head on the pour, smells just like christmas to me… less on the pumpkin pie now. I think this is a well rounded good tasting beer.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there! Especially to Jeremia, we love you..stay safe bro!

more blue…

I finished this one last week.. just slow to take a pic and upload it.

cheers!

20×16, oil on canvas

Rockin’ out.

Last night Wendie and I broke down and picked up “Guitar Hero III” for the Wii. We’ve heard it was a blast by a few people and they were right! It’s a fairly simple concept… you strap on the guitar, and rock…hard. Its surprisingly difficult to get the rhythm and notes down, and we’re still playing the most basic song (Slow Ride, by Foghat). We had a great time learning how to play the game and gettin’ all up in the rocker stance grinding on the axe! :)