I was looking at the previous posts and realized I haven’t had a brew day since April 2015, a half a year went by! The weather has finally cooled off enough to allow me to start “kitchen fermenting” again, so this next beer recipe is an attempt to brew a Ballast Point Grapefruit Sculpin-ish beer. Some notable areas of learning for me during this batch will be…
- First time to use grapefruit, or any other fruit, in a batch of homebrew.
- First time attempting mash hopping and possibly first-wort hopping.
For the grain bill, i’m planning on…
| percentage | lbs | ingredient | potential SG | points |
| 86.43% | 12.1 | two-row pale | 1.036 | 435.6 |
| 5.71% | 0.8 | caramel malt 10L | 1.035 | 28 |
| 4.29% | 0.6 | carapils malt | 1.033 | 19.8 |
| 3.57% | 0.5 | caramel vienne 20L (briess) | 1.034 | 17 |
| 100.00% | 14 | 500.4 |
For the hops/additions schedule, I am planning on…
| timing | amount | type |
| mash | 1.5oz | amarillo pellet hops |
| first wort hops | 2.0oz | columbus hops |
| 30 mins out | 1.0oz | simcoe hops |
| 30 mins out | 0.5oz | amarillo hops |
| 5 mins out | 1/2 | tablet whirlfloc |
| whirlpool/flameout | 0.5oz | simcoe hops |
| whirlpool/flameout | 0.5oz | amarillo hops |
| yeast | 2 | packets WLP001 |
| dry hop 2 weeks in | 0.5oz | simcoe hops |
| dry hop 2 weeks in | 0.5oz | amarillo hops |
Prep day notes:
- @ the homebrew shop, didn’t have Briess Caramel Vienne 20L, so got this Chateau Cara Ruby. Hope it’s similar!
- @ the homebrew shop, didn’t have WLP001, so got Wyeast 1056 American Ale instead.
- The night before brew day, bottles were all cleaned and set on the FastRack.
- Also the night before, the two yeast packs were brought to room temperature, smacked, then slumbered overnight with a warm water bottle.
Brew day notes…
- Brew day was on Sunday, November 1st 2015.
- Strike water measured for 8 gallons starting volume, flame on at 11:00am.
- Strike water brought to starting temperature of 158F, goal of mashing at 150F for 60 minutes. Reached temp at 11:40am.
- 14lbs of grains and 1.5oz Amarillo hops in water by 11:53pm. Mash held very close to 150F with a little bit of help from burners and stirring occasionally.
- After mash and grains being extracted, 15.5 cups (124oz) recovered from BIAB bags – just about a gallon. Flame on at 1:06pm
- 2oz Columbus FWH (first wort hops) added, flame on at 1:06pm, hit 212F boil at 1:45pm.
- 7.17 gallons of wort at start of 60 minute boil.
- 1oz Simcoe and 0.5oz Amarillo hops at 30 minutes out.
- 6.61 gallons at 30 mins left mark, boiling off 0.56 gallons/half hour.
- Immersion chiller at 15 mins out.
- Whirlfloc 1/2 tablet at 5 mins out.
- 0.5oz Amarillo + 0.5oz Simcoe flame-out hops, rest / whirlpool for 20 minutes (don’t have any whirlpool gear, so stirred occasionally)
- Began cooling wort with immersion chiller at 3:08pm, hit 68F after 10 minutes.
- Took OG gravity reading, measuring 1.065.
- Transferred wort to fermentation bucket, ran into issue with whole leaf hops totally clogging ball valve. Used sanitized measuring cup to painfully scoop out wort to pour over screen filter into bucket.
- Aerated wort with oxygen stone for 2 minutes.
- Pitched 2 x Wyeast packets, capped bucket and connect blow-out tube.
- Cleaned stuff. Finished cleaning at 4:22pm, long day!
Will dry hop and add grapefruit rinds on Sunday, November 15th.- The batch was dry-hopped and had grapefruit peeled skins added on Monday, November 16th, 2015.
- Dry hopping was 0.5oz of Simcoe whole-cone hops and 0.5oz of Amarillo pellet hops. These were in the fridge for two weeks in opened hop bags that were re-closed with metal binder clips. I think in future I’ll try to avoid doing that, as I think they may lose some freshness.
- I went with 5 organic ruby red grapefruits from the nearby Whole Foods ($1.99/lb, came out to less than $12), and then washed and peeled them using a vegetable peeler. Initially I was going to try cutting sections of skin and removing the white pith from the inside, but that totally was not working so stuck to just peeling them from the outside. This worked really well actually, and avoided getting any of the bitter pith on the skins.
- I chose to steam sanitize the skins prior to adding.
The five organic ruby red grapefruits washed and ready to be peeled.
Peeling the skins from the outside using a vegetable peeler, avoiding to get any of the white pith.
The ounce of hops ready to go, 1/2 Simcoe whole leaf and 1/2 Amarillo pellet.
The grapefruit skins getting steamed prior to being added, for sanitation purposes.
Once everything was ready, I cleaned and sanitized the lid and bucket sides, then opened it up. The beer is looking good, fermentation left a nice mark along the sides!
The dry-hopping and grapefruit peels additions are done, and then the beer is capped once more. Will give this batch a week, and then we’re on to bottling day!
Bottling day notes:
- We bottled this batch of beer on Tuesday, November 24th 2015.
- The FG reading was 1.010, and with OG of 1.065 we ended up with 7.2% abv.
- We got 48 12oz bottles, plus 1 more 12oz by using the fiasco bottle + hydrometer reading leftovers bottle (i know gross right?) – just didn’t want to pour it out. So marked that one with an X 😛
- Had the bottling wand tip fall into a bottle while pouring, got beer all over the floor, but saved the day by stopping the flow, and pouring out / back in using a strainer and sanitized cup. Was fuming for a sec there. Again just didn’t want to pour that beer into the sink, so rescued it.
- It smelled really nice, I personally detected a faint soapy after taste.
- Measured out 4.5oz of dextrose into just over 2 cups of boiled water for priming.
The lid taken off, the dry hopped and grapefruit skinned beer ready for bottling!
Siphoning the beer to the bottling bucket.
A taste of the wort before bottle conditioning has its way.
The gravity reading says 1.010. Compared to the OG of 1.065, we have 7.2% abv!
And after three weeks of bottle conditioning, the beer is coming out very nice indeed. Have sampled a few bottles and am really happy with how it came out.
The timing of this batch is perfectly aligned to the Christmas holiday, so I made a batch of homemade labels to complement it, and plan to share this one with friends and family during the holidays and save the imperial vanilla stout for even longer (maybe NEXT Christmas?) 🙂
bodobeers 