All-Grain

Drew turned 45 and what better way to celebrate turning 45 than making a birthday brew. Together we created an IPA with a nominal starting gravity of 1.074 and 74 IBUs (to reflect Drew's 1974 birthday), the beer used 4 malts, 5 hops with 45% and 45% of the malts being two base malts. The hops include a special addition - hop terpenes of Citra and Columbus for the keg

From the January '18 shop brew session, this recipe was created based on several ingredients I found available for cheap/free. The shop had accidentally ordered a bag of Munich light malt of a brand that they don't normally stock, so they marked it way down to get it out of inventory. I mentioned to several other members that I wanted to use that malt for the shop brew to see if they had recipe suggestions. John Aitcheson said he had saved yeast slurry from an earlier batch that had been cultured from a bottle of Westvleteren 8 and offered it for the shop brew. Given that yeast (free!) and that malt (cheap!) a strong dark Belgian style brew made the most sense. At this writing, the ferment is now tapering off. The wort by itself tasted fantastic.

July Club Shop Brew Belgian Witbier with Matt & Andy On Sunday July 31st, just in time to still call it July, Matt Myerhoff and Andy Ziskin let a shop brew-crew in brewing a Belgian Witbier with a little bit of a twist. In looking at Jamil's Brewing Classic Styles we noticed he preferred using fresh orange zest and chamomile tea in his recipe. To give our beer a little more unique character we decided to use fresh lime zest, leaves and sage mostly from Andy's garden. We had an excellent brew crew, thank you to Jay, Susie, Scot, Justin, Jeremy and Cullen. To pass time during the mash, Matt brought a projector and we watched a few beer related videos in the comfort of the air conditioned club house. Of course, there was plenty of really great Homebrew shared by all. We may have over sparged just a bit and missed our OG by a few points, but a great day was had by all. A very special thanks to Alex from Westlake Brewing for donating a huge pitch of yeast for our Brewers! Look for the beer to make an appearance at the September club meeting and the Oktoberfest party. Recipe for 40G Estimated OG was 1.051 / Actual OG 1.044