Chamomille IPA

After a longer than expected hiatus, moving can be quite time consuming, we are brewing again. Our last two beers had been a Chamomile IPA, which is almost ready to be bottled, and an Orange Coriander American Wheat. The Chamomile IPA is a Chinook IPA from Northern Brewer with a little twist, we added half a gallon of Chamomile and half a pound of honey.

Regarding the half gallon of Chamomille, just note that what we added was a very strong half gallon, we are lucky to live close to Harvestime foods and they sell 1 oz. Chamomile bags for little more than $1.50, so we put the whole thing to boil.

The recipe:

0.75 lbs. Dingemans Caramel Pils

0.25 lbs Briess Caramel 120

6 lbs Pilsen malt syrup

1 lb dry malt extract

3 oz. Chinook (1 oz. boils for 60 mins, 1 oz. 10 mins before the end of the boil and 1 oz. finishing hops about 1 min. before the end of the boil)

1 oz. Chamomile

0.5 lbs honey

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

The original gravity is 1.054 and after two weeks we put it into secondary fermentation for about six more weeks. We want to bottle it sometime this week and will be posting a review around mid June.

Oriental Amber

It's 10:30a.m. on Sunday morning and this has been our morning agenda:

• Brew coffee, drink coffee.
• Eat breakfast.
• Sanitize beer equipment.
• Wash dishes.
• Clean kitchen.
• Begin brewing process.
• Scan photos.
• Listen to NPR.
• Brew.
• Clean kitchen.
• Wash floors.

It has been a busy morning. We woke up this morning on the creative side of the bed. (Beer translation: Instead of following a recipe book or using a kit, we decided to make our own experimental amber ale.)

We have loads of tea and have enjoyed adding it to our brews. (Past batches have included: hibiscus green tea wheat, sangria tea ale & white tea steam). Today we decided to go with an oriental tea straight from the non-homelands of Germany (Rotbuschtee Orientalische).

Without further ado here is the recipe. (Please note: This is an experimental amber, and while we are confident it will turn out delicious, we aren't making any promises :)).

1 lb. crystal medium

6.6 lb. amber malt extract

.5 ga. Rotbuschtee Orientalische tea (steep apart from wort until very strong & add with boiling hops)

1 lb. honey (add with finishing hops)

1 oz. amarillo hops (boiling)

1 oz. cascade hops (finishing)

1056 American ale liquid yeast (Wyeast)

OG: 1.052

Do let us know if you have any questions. We'll be sure to post our review of the final product in the months to come.

La Flor Solita.

The brisk autumn air is upon us. While it doesn't make me happy that little flowers like this one are soon going to go away, I am excited about pulling out the my woolen sweaters, leather boots, scarves and hot cocoa mugs.

I'm a Northern gal, what can I say? My lovely pm reminds me of this quite often. Part of the reason he does so, I think, is because he is a southern guy. [There's a song all about people like him: Los Delinquentes, Despues. They're singing all about la gente abajito del sol :)]

Regardless of being from the north or the south, I love fall. It's something about the changing of the leaves, the air and our clothes that almost forces us to change gears. Some of these changes admittedly may be against my will (aka -- fall cleaning and closed windows), but others bring excitement. Our biggest celebration . . . the cooling of the airs means we can brew again!! We kicked off yesterday with bottling our peach american wheat. This will give a little bottle of sunshine on cold days.

We've got lots of floral and herbal teas in the cabinet. Maybe we mesh some of these flavors and aromas into our next homebrew. Hmmm....

30 Days of Creativity - Day 11: Brew Day

A marvelous day. The laundry is done and a batch of beer has been brewed all before noon. Score!

We have been slacking lately on our homebrewing. Mostly because some of our gear is at my parent's house, and also because our apartment has been hot. It seemed to have cooled off in the last week, so we figured we had better take advantage of the situation before it's too late. After all, this dunkelweizen could be our last brew for the summer. (*sigh)

We are in love with the Northern Brewer kits. We got this kit at their Milwaukee location; it was affordable and an extremely easy recipe. If you are a first-timer, I would highly recommend using this kit. When we first started brewing we used some really funky kits. The beer was horrible. We've advanced since then - thank goodness!

While we admit not a whole lot of creativity went into this recipe (as we followed it verbatim), that is not normally how we roll. We've been really into doing tea beers lately, and are hoping to do one more of those before it gets too hot to turn our stove on. [Our last brew - a white tea steam beer - turned out delicious.]

So here's to homebrewing and the weekend. Prost!