Blue's Brews

It’s been a while since a ‘real’ post, but I’ve decided to start the blog back up.  I just kegged the Gumballhead recipe I brewed a few weeks ago.  For this iteration, I switched yeasts from WLP002 to WLP007.  I think both of these yeasts really complement the hops (Amarillo).  I’ve also totally changed the hop schedule.

Previously I had a lot of late boil hopping, plus a decent dry-hop addition.  I heard a ‘rumor’ that the makers of this beer do so with one boil addition, which is the bittering addition. and all of the flavor and aroma come from dry-hops.

I held off on posting this until sampling it…at first I was going to do a two-stage dry-hop addition with a 4 oz for 4 days and an additional 2 oz for 2 days after dumping the first addition (I ferment in a 14 gallon conical).  After sampling it, I decided I was where I wanted to be, and stuck with the 4 oz.  This hop addition is the same as my earlier iterations of this recipe…but it seems like giving dry-hops their own stage to shine really cleans up the profile and makes them ‘pop’.   I may be using this technique a lot in the future, especially for ‘session’ hoppy  beers and APAs.

As usual, I did build up the yeast from 1 vial to ~400 billion cells via a 4 liter starter, then crashed it.  Something I’ve been doing lately is ‘waking the yeast up’ on brew day. I take about 600ml of my first runnings (which are around 1.090 for a beer this size), then add about 600ml of water, bringing the gravity to ‘starter’ range.  I boiled this wort for a few minutes, chilled it, and added the yeast from the starter (the supernatant was first decanted), and got it going while I finished the brewday.  This technique gets the yeast going within 30 minutes of being pitched into the wort, and really speeds up fermentation. It is a practice I have been and will continue to use.

Recipes and Photos below.

~ by kungfool on October 3, 2012.

Posted in Brewday pics, Brewing Techniques, Recipes