Brew #38: Wendies Porter 2

Wendie and I had a really great time hanging out with a group of friends in Philomath this Saturday! We drank a bunch of my buddy Tony’s homebrew and had a group brew session/barbeque in the sun! (I got burnt!) Tony brewed a Dead Guy clone 10 gallon batch using Rogues yeast strain called Pacman, should be a great beer! The buckets were bubbling away almost immediately after he pitched his starter! Nice! Kurt was brewing his first all grain batch, 5 gallons of altbier, which seemed to go along nicely. Altbier is a fairly new style for me, as I’ve brewed only one myself and tried a commercial example. Kurt brought a couple litres of his previous batch of Altbier which I thought was great! I think mine comes off a little bit more bitter, but otherwise pretty similar.
I was brewing a 5 gallon batch of the porter that Wendie loves.. I’m bumping up the chocolate malt, and using a different hop and yeast. I’m hoping to have the beer taste malty, chocolate and roasty, and then to finish with a little bit of sweetness. The yeast starter went well and kicked the ferment off within a few hours. I left the ferment at 70-72 for the first 10 hours, then put a wet towel on it to chill the ferment down to 68. So far so good, we’ll see how it turns out!

Wendies Porter 2
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Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Robust Porter
Batch: 5.50 galAll Grain

Characteristics
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Recipe Gravity: 1.073 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 27 IBU
Recipe Color: 34¬? SRM
Estimated FG: 1.018
Alcohol by Volume: 7.1%
Alcohol by Weight: 5.6%

Ingredients
———–
American black patent 0.50 lb, Grain, Mashed
American chocolate malt 1.00 lb, Grain, Mashed
American two-row 11.50 lb, Grain, Mashed
Crystal 40L 1.50 lb, Grain, Mashed
German Munich 1.50 lb, Grain, Mashed

Fuggles 0.75 oz, Whole, 60 minutes
Willamette 0.50 oz, Whole, 60 minutes
Willamette 1.50 oz, Whole, 10 minutes

Irish Moss 1.00 unit, Fining,
WLP500 Edinburgh Ale 1.00 unit, Yeast, 500ml starter

Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:

Batch Notes:
1.064 OG, got like 5ga exact

Open Source HDR software.

A friend at work pointed me to this open source software package for merging images to make HDR photographs. I’ve fiddled with it a little bit just to see how the interface works and how well it aligns the images and I’m highly impressed! I’ve been using Photoshop to make my HDR images, but Photoshop is not exactly as inexpensive as “free”. ;)

If you’re a photographer and you dig HDR, check out Qtpfsgui on Sourceforge!

Practicing on the DS

I’m loving this painting program, Colors!, on the Nintendo DS. Many props to the folks running the public colors gallery and to the guy who is writing Colors!. Love it.

Click the pic to go to the gallery page, scroll to the bottom to click and replay the piece being made.

Brew #37: Racing Stripe Brown

I did a little research on brown ales, and went ahead and imperialized it. The Corvallis Brew Supply shop fellas are having an imperial brown ale homebrew taste off mano e mano in mid June so I thought I would make one as well. We’ll see how it turns out in the next couple of weeks, but it tastes promising already!

Racing Stripe Brown
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Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Imperial Brown Ale
Batch: 5.00 gal, Mashed

Characteristics
—————
Recipe Gravity: 1.083 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 52 IBU
Recipe Color: 26° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.021
Alcohol by Volume: 8.4%
Alcohol by Weight: 6.5%

Ingredients
———–
American two-row 12.00 lb, mashed
CaraPils 0.75 lb, mashed
German Munich 0.50 lb, mashed
Crystal 40L 0.75 lb, mashed
Crystal 60L 0.50 lb, mashed
British chocolate malt 0.75 lb, mashed

Northern Brewer 1.10 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Northern Brewer 1.15 oz, whole, 30 minutes
Irish Moss 2.00 tsp, 30 minutes
Willamette 1.00 oz, whole, 15 minutes
Willamette 1.00 oz, whole, 5 minutes

WLP002 English Ale Yeast 1.00 unit, 1L starter

Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:
Shooting for 5 gallons in the fermenter, use 5ga at mash (150f), 5ga at sparge.

Batch Notes: collected 5.5 gallons, OG 1.072.. Tastes malty and chocolatey! The WLP002 starter took right off and its fermenting at 65F. Dropped temp to 63f in first 24 hours.

Edit 5/3: kegged, FG is 1.016. The taste profile seems really well balanced on the malt/chocolate/hops and alcohol. I really like this beer so far. I’ll carb it up and see how it goes from here!

5/9: Medium level of carbonation, has a creamy dense light tan head that lasts forever. I get a malty and subtle floral hop aroma. As the beer warms up a little bit I’m tasting some toasted sort of bakers chocolate flavors along with a bit of a spicy hop flavor/bitterness and fairly balanced, but high, alcohol taste. This beer seems to have a medium to dry finish with some alcohol warmth and roasted aftertaste.