Category: Beer

Categories
Beer Home Brewing

Honey I’m Home (beer recipe)

My wife wanted to design a beer recipe on her own. She was interested in creating a malt forward beer that was an easy session beer. She didn’t want something too bitter. Without a beer style in mind she designed the following recipe.  I think it would be classified as a Mild.  It was named “Honey I’m Home” because of the amount of honey malt in the grist bill.  Say it like you are Ricky Ricardo.

Ingredients:

  • 3 lbs German Pilsner Malt (1.6 SRM)
  • 3 lbs Two-row Malt (US) (2.0 SRM)
  • 2 lbs CaraPils (1.8 SRM)
  • 1 lb Honey Malt (Canadian) (18.0 SRM)
  • 1 oz Hallertauer [4.8 %] – Boil 25 min
  • 1 oz Saaz [4.0 %] – Boil 25 min
  • 1 oz Hallertauer [4.8 %] – Boil 0 min
  • 1 oz Saaz [4.0 %] – Boil 0 min
  • American Ale Yeast (US 05)

Targets:

  • Original Gravity: 1.046
  • Final Gravity: 1.010 – 1.013
  • Estimated ABV: 4.3 %
  • Bitterness: 17.5 IBUs
  • Color: 5.4 SRM

Directions:

  1. Mash grains in single step infusion.  Target a mash temperature of 149° F.  Mash for an hour or until conversion is complete.
  2. Batch sparge the grains and collect 7 gallons of wort.
  3. Boil the wort for 60 minutes.
  4. At 25 minutes remaining, add the first charge of hops.
  5. At flame out add the remaining hops.
  6. Using immersion chiller, cool wort to yeast pitching temperature (68° F).
  7. Transfer to fermentor and pitch yeast.
  8. Ferment at 68° F until complete. (approx 10 days)
  9. Bottle or keg.

Notes:

I really like this beer.  When fresh, it has a nice hop character to it.

Categories
Beer

Lindeman’s Kriek Lambic

The other day I picked up some new beers to try. One of them was Lindeman’s Kriek Lambic. A lambic beer is a beer made from malted barley and unmalted wheat. It has little hop bitterness and no hop aroma or flavor.  After the wort is boiled, it is put into large shallow vats to cool in the open air (cool ships). As the wort cools it is inoculated with the wild yeasts and bacterial that float on the air. After the beer is cooled and inoculated it is put into wooden barrels or vats to ferment. The result is a beer with a acidic nature and other funky flavors.!–more–

A kriek is a lambic beer that has cherries added to the beer after the primary fermentation has finished. The cherries add color, flavor and more sourness to the beer. The Lindeman’s kriek was a nice cherry flavor without being syrupy. It was sparklely and refreshing. It poured a nice cherry pink/red color with the foam also being pink. It was a little like a cherry flavored sparkling wine.

For my first kriek beer, I quite enjoyed it. I don’t know what other commercial examples are like, but I think that this is something that I would like to brew at home. I wonder how the sour pie cherries would work that we sometime buy over in Willard. Either the the pie cherries or the cherry concentrate would be worth trying.