This is an open diary/blog/collection of notes about my beer explorations.
"Early" xxx refers to ingredients added early in the brewing process. "Late" correspondingly is at the end.
Initial notes
Whole lot of thoughts and observations that have developed while I've been brewing, and think should be written down.
- Limiting a beer by starving it of sugar is a MUCH more reliable method of control than by limiting it by vitamins. Note the recent theories on alcohol production in cycles as a reference for how the vitamin floor affects brewing. Another method of limiting a beer is to simply drive it to the alcohol cap, and add sugar from there. This doesn't work, though, if you want a less potent brew.
- Y-40 dry requires maltose be lower than the M-floor. This doesn't allow enough barley to leave a taste, with Y-40. Sorry, no "hint of barley" or better. Similarly, though, potent and very potent varieties will all have at least some honey taste, as "no malt" means that you are left with honey sugars, and Late honey in order to supply the needed vitamins.
- with Y-40 at least, Bold Barley taste requires enough malt to also provide Black.
- The difference between honey added at "100 seconds left" and honey added at "20 seconds left" is sizeable enough to change your brew. My "Dry, hint of honey" became "Dry, noticable honey" this way.
Standard Manipulations
Once you have Beer X, how do you get Beer Y?
- Move honey from earlier to later: adds honey taste (not always desired) and vitamins.
- trade early light malt for medium, or dark malt: adds color, but takes away some tannin
- trade late honey for late raw malt: adds vitamins, lowers total sugars, trades glucose for maltose
- Feeling rich? trade honey for burnt malt to change glucose to sucrose: - vitamins, - honey taste
- Darker beer: consider first, trading medium roast for dark roast. Add early Burnt as needed.
Current Notes
- a new beer every day for the last few. I think they may be on to me, people keep coming from as far as RSO, unless Gazelle sightings distract them....
- the best laid plans... more proof of vitamin flooring chanciness. Sweet, hint of barley failed, but gave some results. going to see if cutting down the honey helps... Hate to put time towards vitamin flooring experiments with so many beers yet to make...
- 2005-04-26 And now, a game of Beer Hunter, to hunt down yeasts that will yield festival flavors. Y-40 is a great yeast and all for run of the mill variations, but...
- 2005-04-28 Found Y-41 (cinnamon?) and Y-74, with the latter having the added bonus of 1 or 2 other yeasts alongside it. However, those yeasts seem to be so close together that seal time is critical, and being just a coordinate or two off makes a different yeast predominate. 3 kettles, within a coordinate or so of each other, and at least 2 different microbe orders. what a pain in the neck. But after 6 tries, I finally got a seal time that gets me the first yeast.
- 2005-05-05. Narrowed Y-74 down to a useful seal time, and tried open kettle brewing for both that and the Y-41 yeast. No dice, both turned moldy, even at VP values. *sigh*. Am narrowing down Y-41 to a useful seal time as well (between 1800 and 1400).
- 2005-05-05. Sadly 50 honey at start, and 10 more at 20 seconds left is just over the line into "hint of honey". Didn't ruin the batches, but did produce a different brew than I was expecting.
- 2005-05-11. Beren has found a likely spot for VP date beer. Will have to arrange for testing of such trifles as "will it work?" and "what seal time is needed (if any)?" More pedestrian beer last night, and about the usual number of suspects to drink it. Perhaps tomorrow night I can work in some cinnamon beer (no relation to the christmas story) experiments.
- 2005-05-17. Could not find a location where the date side of the beer exceeded the other yeast. (and boy, that other yeast had a greater range of "being first on the list" than the date yeast.) Have started making beer for the Mega Completion party. My first batch had much more honey taste than I had calculated. perhaps the spreadsheet values are wrong?
- (later). A Doh! moment. Of course the spreadsheet is wrong. Y-40 didn't have a Honey multiplier. Which brings to mind a failing of my experiments page. After a while, of course, the "other fruit flavors" don't matter - much. But when you are aiming for a beer that falls right in the gap between "hint of honey", "noticable honey" and "fruity, Noticable honey", you do have to pay attention.
- 2005-06-27. Never underestimate the treachery and low value of the Y-41 vitamin floor...