Shoshin Pico-Brewery   Notes on our homebrewing adventures

Tis the season to make tasty firepit beer 🙂

Recipe Type: All-Grain
Yeast: S-05
Yeast Starter: 24g from a big brick
Batch Size (Gallons): 5 gallons
Original Gravity: 1.064
Final Gravity:
IBU: ~25
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color:
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):

10# 2-row
1# C60
1# Special B
1# brown sugar (@ flameout)

0.5 oz Northern Brewer (7.8 AAU)

90 oz Libby’s canned pumpkin, baked at 350* for 60 minutes to caramelize, all went in the mash

copious rice hulls in the mash, mashed with the copper manifold in the blue cooler, was able to circulate and clarify like a BOSS

Mash temp began at 150°, dropped to about 147° by the 60 minute mark when I began to lauter and sparge

3 tsp pumpkin spice at 15 min

Brewed 9/26, first checked 1 week later (10/3). Gravity: 1.005, weighing in at 8% ABV – tastes delicious, but there’s a little bit of a metal twang at the end. Will let the yeast work on it for another week and then cold-crash it to see what we can get.

The hops were poppin! and some were beginning to dry out and brown, so I thought it might be a good time to brew a wet hopped IPA. I collected 12oz wet hops, some Cascade and some Fuggles (in an unknown proportion), with a tiny bit of some norther brewer likely mixed in. Cascade and Fuggles grew really well, NB grew just a bit (and bore just a few hop cones), but Nugget didn’t seem to thrive AT ALL – need to look into this. Anywho, here’s the beer:

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: S-05
Yeast Starter: nope
Batch Size (Gallons): 6
Original Gravity: 1.043
Final Gravity: 
IBU: ~32
Boiling Time (Minutes): 75
Color: amber?
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):

8.5# 2-row
8oz Carapils
8oz C40
8oz Honey malt

1oz NB pellets – FWH
12oz wet hop medley, ala back yard bines (see above), added at whirlpool, 185°

(1) whirlfloc added at 10 min left
(1) tsp Gypsum added with 10 min left

Mashed for 75 minutes, began at 151°, ended at 149°, then I got a stuck sparge, so I danced between sloppy buckets and re-filled mash tuns until we captured nearly 10 gal of wort.

I figured out that the newest false bottom of mine for the red 5gal cooler/mashtun was being defeated, as the bottom of the mash tun becomes concave when it heats up, and curves at roughly the same degree as the false bottom. Need to find a different solution here.

Whirlpool for 30 minutes with the wet hops, added at 185°, yielded 6

I was going for a dank west-coast-style DIPA, but ran into a stuck sparge, tried to re-filter the first 3 gallons of fresh wort after fixing things, and ended up drawing way more wort than I had originally intended (~9 gal), and the beer ended up far lower gravity than I had planned. Welp. Hopefully will make beer. Based roughly on Batch 73.

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: half S-04, half S-05 (two different carboys)
Yeast Starter: nope
Batch Size (Gallons): 9 (4 and 4)
Original Gravity: 1.048
Final Gravity: 
IBU: all of them?
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Color:
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):

12# 2-row
10oz Carapils
10oz C40
5oz Honey malt

3oz FF – FWH
0.5oz FF – 45, 40, 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, 5
1oz FF – flameout, 180°
0.5oz Centennial – 5, flameout
0.5oz Cascade – 5, flameout

(1) package Burton Salts (for 5gal batch) added to mash
(1) tsp Gypsum added to mash

Mashed for 30 minutes at ~125°, for ~30 minutes ~140°, for ~30 minutes at ~150° (mash in was waaaay too cold, and I spent the next 60 minutes trying to make up for it with boiling water additions and double-checking my thermometers).

Chilled close to 60°, split between two carboys and pitched yeast. Woohoo!

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: WLP830
Yeast Starter: worked up from .5L to 2L starter
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.047
Final Gravity: 1.006 (5.4% ABV)
IBU: 25
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: 9.5
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 63° first day, 56° second day
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):

5# Vienna
4# Munich
2# Maris Otter
0.5# C60

1oz German Hallertau (3.8%) – FWH
1oz German Hallertau (3.8%) – 30 min
1 whirlfloc – 10min

Brewed 9/26, by 9/27 it was down to 63°, 9/28 it was 56°, both days bubbling away lazily 🙂 leveled-out at about 51º

Taken out on 10/25 for a diacetyl rest, got up to ~70º

Returned to the lagering tank on 10/29 where it sat at around 41º until kegging on 11/24. It entered the keg CLEAR AS A BELL, with rich malt and caramel notes, and absolutely FABULOUS

Inspired by the dire global circumstances of the age, as well as the generous and delicious-looking recipe shared by Kal from the Electric Brewery:

https://shop.theelectricbrewery.com/pages/firestone-walker-wookey-jack-black-rye-ipa

scaled roughly in half, and brewed in parallel by my friend and fellow cubscout leader, Kurt Nachtman, we bring you: the Black Death

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: S-05
Yeast Starter: yeast cake from Batch 88
Batch Size (Gallons): 6.5
Original Gravity: 1.062(me), 1.060(KN)
Final Gravity: 1.?
IBU: 60?
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: 35?
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):

12# 2-row
1.5# rye
0.5# cararye
0.5# carafa III
0.5# midnight wheat

0.5oz Northern Brewer – FWH
1oz Citra – 20min
1oz Amarillo – 20min
1 whirlfloc – 15min

2oz Citra – flameout
2oz Amarillo – flameout

1oz Citra – added near end of fermentation
1oz Amarillo – added near end of fermentation

1oz Citra – added to secondary? keg?
1oz Amarillo – added to secondary? keg?

tried for 148° mash, I think we both hit in the low 140s

First dry hop after krausen dropped, 6 days later on 5/19/20