Brewed: Modern Times Hoppy Wheat

In early March, my wife coerced me into tackling the Whole30 Challenge with her. For the uninitiated, the Whole30 Challenge is basically a 30 day, ultra-strict paleo diet, so no beer, bread, grains of any kind, or dairy and enough vegetables to scare a small child into thinking all the candy in the world was gone.

I wanted to have something light and freshly hopped ready to drink for day 31, so I ordered up a pound of Citra and tweaked a recipe The Mad Fermentationist created for Modern Times.

For whatever reason, my order took about 6 days compared to the usual 2 to make it from Northern Brewer in Minneapolis to my house, so this batch turned into a rare weeknight brewday in order to get it brewed, dry hopped, dry hopped again, and kegged before the end of my tenure as Vegetarian In Chief.

Brewing was pretty uneventful. I’ve been struggling with a few batches overattenuating on me, though I thought I’d nailed that down to a once-trusted thermometer now reading about 6°F low at mash temps, though this batch proved I’m not completely rid of that problem. I’ll probably break down and order a Thermapen to rid myself of any further doubt. With 45 seconds of low-flow oxygen and a healthy, 1L pitch of Wyeast 1056, this brew fermented down to 1.008 from 1.052, or about 84.62% apparent attenuation. The next batch I make I’ll be revisiting how long the wort spends below 170°F during sparging just to rule out anything odd. I typically try to heat the first runnings up to 170+ as quick as I can to denature the enzymes in lieu of doing a mash-out, but I’m down to thinking either I have a second bunk thermometer, or I need to start doing a mash-out step.

Despite sounding terribly thin, this beer tastes amazing just at just 18 days old, and just in time for our first day of spring temperatures. I double purged everything with C0₂ when racking and dry-hopping.It is lacking a little body, but I don’t perceive it to be as dry as the numbers suggest, and the citra/centennial hop combo lends some amount of stickiness to the mouthfeel.

It’s been really great reading updates on how Modern Times has gone from concept to reality, and I wish them the best of luck as they get closer to their first production batches. With recipes like this, they no doubt have a great future ahead of them.

Spring of Eternal Winter (Wheat)

Notes

• 2013.04.08 : Made a 1.5L starter on the stir plate. 500mL will be pulled and crashed for the Iron Ranger brewday for the coming weekend.
• 2013.04.09 : A rare weeknight brewday.
• 2013.04.14 : Added 1oz Centennial and ¾oz citra for dry hopping round 1
• 2013.04.21 : Kegged with 2oz citra hops

Brewed: Stone IPA Clone

Looking over my brew log, it’s evident that I’ve brewed and drank more batches of Bells Two Hearted clones in the last year than I care to admit, so I’m making a solid effort this year to have an IPA on tap at all times that I can’t source locally. For the first round, I found Edwort’s Stone IPA clone on homebrewtalk and adjusted the percentages for a 6 gallon batch.

As a side note, being a craft beer guy in North Dakota is not much fun. Amazingly, a liquor store just across the river stocks Surly, but in small quantities, and forget about special releases unless you can leave work at odd hours and stand in line. You can basically forget about anything interesting from either of the coasts. I have to drive 225 miles before I find a store that carries Stone. The last time I was in Minneapolis, I bought a few bottles each of their Pale Ale, IPA, Ruination, and Arrogant Bastard, all of which I enjoyed, so it seemed like a good starting point.

Beautiful cold break with the 50 degree ground water we’re still enjoying. I named this batch Iron Ranger because the color reminded me of the red hills in northern Minnesota.

Iron Ranger

Notes

• 2013.04.13 : made a 1.25L starter and put on the stirplate
• 2014.04.14 : Brewed by myself. Lower than expected lauter efficiency, so I upped the boil time to get up to the expected SG. Collected 5.5 gallons of 1.065 wort into the fermenter. Oxygenated for 60 seconds and left in the fermentation chamber at 65°
• 2013.04.18 : Fermentation slowing down. Temp bumped to 68°
• 2013.04.21 : Krausen settled out nearly completely. Added dry hops. Gravity down to 1.010.