Bottling Mild & Winter Ales

handw — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 06:46:12 +0000

Mild and Winter Ales are in bottles, capped, and ready to go!

Mild and Winter Ales almost ready

handw — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:14:29 +0000

On December 19th we returned to the brewery and turned out a Mild and a Winter beer. The mild is just that – it’s a nice orange color, subtly biscuity and malty with just enough Goldings hops to balance. At around 3.5% ABV I’m hoping it’ll make a great session beer. The winter ale is bigger and bolder – about 8.5% ABV – but still light and eminently drinkable thanks to a big dose of honey. They’ve been kegged and are carbonating, so we’ll have to celebrate their release from the kegs here pretty soon!

Hazelnut Brown

handw — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:53:50 +0000

After a long, long hiatus, H&W brewing is back at it. In a new location, and with Hank MIA, I set out to brew a brown ale. The new setup has lots of kinks to work out, but works well overall.

smack the pack to start proofing the yeast

setting up the plumbing

brewing is 90% sanitization

weigh the malt

mill the malt – crush the grains to break them open and allow the enzymes and starches inside to react with water

heat the mash liquor

mash in at 175 deg, the hot water activates enzymes in the malt to convert starches to sugar

check the mash temp – it should stay between 150 deg and 158 deg

iodine test – if the tincture of iodine turns purple, the starches aren’t done converting to sugars

the sparge ring – hot water at 170 deg will stop the enzymes. the water also washes the sugars and flavor compounds out of the grains and becomes the wort.

extracting the sweet wort from the grains

more sparging (extracting the sugars from the grain)

sparging is about finished

put the kettle of wort on the burner and boil. once the boil has started, add hops and continue to boil for an hour. Hops left to boil for this long will contribute mostly bitterness (as opposed to flavor or aroma).

add some aroma hops (pellet, Willamette) just before the boil is done – when added this late, they will add hop aroma without more bitterness

turn on the wort chiller – bring the wort from boiling down to around 75°

drain the wort into the primary fermenter

measure the gravity

pitch the yeast

and it’s done! now we just wait for the yeast to do their magic.

Hank And Wayne

Bottling Mild & Winter Ales

Mild and Winter Ales almost ready

Hazelnut Brown