The Dixie Cup!

No, I don't want you to pee in it.

But what I do want you to do is take a look here at one of the largest homebrew competitions in Houston, the aptly named Dixie Cup.

Methinks that the Wicked Hops cronies ought to enter!

Also, if you don't like shirts like this, then you obviously don't have a pulse!


Prost!

-- Jeffro

Here is a photo of the weizenbock after two weeks. She's still holding strong, bubbling every 15 seconds or so. Reviews posted online about this yeast indicate that fermentation may take 4+ weeks to complete.

Weizenbock Lager

Okay, it has been two weeks since I actually brewed this beer but thought it was worth adding to the blog. My lagering fridge had been empty for several weeks and I really wanted to get a beer in there. I get to the brew shop and start to gather ingredients when I realize that this beer is an ale...not a lager! How did this happen might you ask? Well, technically bocks are brewed as lagers but this is a strong, dark wheat beer which are classified as ales! I then ask myself, why can't I lager a Weizenbock??? After browsing through the different White Lab lager yeasts available I conclude that the Oktoberfest matched the profile of the beer pretty well. The yeast produces a very malty, bock style beer. Works for me! Fermentation temps range from 52-58 deg which is perfect for my lagering fridge. Here's a look at the recipe:

7.5# Wheat Malt
2# Munich Malt (dark)
2# Vienna Malt
1# Melanoidin Malt
4oz. Chocolate Wheat
2oz. Chocolate Malt
1oz. Tradition Hops (alpha=5.8) @ 60 minutes
White Labs (WLP820) Oktoberfest lager yeast






Also brewing on this beautiful day was Fred (aka...new kid on the block) making a Belgian Witbier.

Racking the Black(berry wheat)

Thought I'd share with you guys how the racking went. If you are scoring at home, you'll remember that this guy made mad krausen during fermentation. The last beer that did this to me was the Beach Bier (more on that later), and it was one of the best beers I ever made.

Apologies ahead of time for the shite quality of images here, my Blackberry (ha no pun intended) phone's camera leaves a lot to be desired.

First thing to notice below the the eponymous krausen crust at the top of the carboy. Pretty benign actually, if not just gross. :)


Racked as usual to the 5-gallon glass carboy, and took a gravity reading. 1.006!!! As it stands this guy has a potential ABV of 6.16%, which is relatively high for a wheat beer (I think). Here's a picture of the sample:



Nice and cloudy, as it should be. Took a swig and DAMN it was good! Bready with a lot of body, not a lot of hop bite (no surprise given the recipe), with a very clean finish. Put it this way: I let Master Chief (wife) try it and she was impressed. I think I'm going to shed a tear!

Because of the extended time in the primary (close to 13 days) I'll probably let this sit about 2 weeks in the secondary before kegging.

Oh, and as for the Beach Bier (its a witbier), that was the beer of request for this year's Crawfish Boil ("Ball") down in the cul-de-sac. Keep your eyes peeled for that brew session, it's a great recipe and will be sure to share it with you all.

Le Pumpkin et Le Blackberry Wheat

Hail peasants!

Today I want to go over a couple of things, namely the tapping of the Keith's Pumpkin Ale as well as a quick ditty of brewing the Blackberry Wheat.

The KPA was a partial extract recipe from deFalco's, they call it the Great Pumkin [sic] Ale. I tried this recipe as an all-grain last time and added WAAAAAY too much pumpkin. To call it chewy and mealy would be a compliment. This time however I scaled back on the pumpkin quite a bit, and poured the first pint below.


I'm pretty pleased with the results. The base beer is an amber that finishes with pumpkin pie spice. I'd like to have tasted more body in the beer, but will give this guy a little bit more time to settle and condition. Ok, on to the Blackberry Wheat!

This is a recipe that I've kind of modded along the way. Technically its an American-style hefeweizen (at least with the grain bill), but I like to use the Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast. Here's the recipe:

• 6# 2-Row Pale Malt


• 3# Domestic White Wheat


• 8oz Cara-Vienne Malt


• 4oz Rice Hulls


• 1.0oz Czech Saaz 3.1AA @ 60m


• 0.5oz Czech Saaz 3.1AA @ 5m


• 2oz blackberry extract @ keg


• Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Mash in with 1.5L of water per pound of grain (about 3.5g) at 152*F. Hold for an hour, mash out slowly (I did a 40min slow draw). Sparge with 4.5g of water at 170*F.


It was a cold mother that day (well, at least for Houston) so we brewed in the garage. You can see the dead soldiers starting to pile up on the table. Somewhere there's a Wicked Hops Rule of Thumb that says not to drink until the boil, but we typically ignore the hell out of that. As Captain Barbosa likes to say, "They're more like guidelines than actual rules." :)

Here we are racking to carboy. Aerated (violently shook) the carboy before adding the Wyeast, and was good to go. Hydrometer reading came in at 1.053. I's pleased with that.

Against, temps in Houston were to be relatively low this week, so I wrapped the guy in a towel and set in the garage. Good thing I did because...


LOOK AT THIS! This is about 24 hours after racking and I've got krausen coming out of my ears! To be fair my carboy is a 6-gallon model and not a 6.5-gallon like Brandon has. Mayhaps I need to invest in one.


All for now, will update you guys when I get em!