Your Sister's Mustache

This beer is the cream ale version of "Your Mother's Mustache", which is my rice based take on the original "Your Father's Mustache".

Your Sister's Mustache (about 3 gallons)

3rd runnings from YMM's mash
1.75lbs Dry light malt extract
1 oz Sterling Hops
Wyeast American Ale

Hop Schedule
.5 oz Sterling 60 minutes
.3 oz Sterling 10 minutes
.2 oz Sterling 0 minutes

Easy, just like your sister.
O.G. 1.049

Ferment for at least a week around 65F.

Your Mother's Mustache

Since it's still frickin' cold in my basement, I decided to brew another lager today, a classic American Pilsner. This was the style of beer that most American breweries brewed before prohibition. It was a slightly stronger, maltier, and hoppier version of the current premium American lagers. Mine is a variation on "Your Father's Mustache" from John Palmer's "How to Brew", using rice instead of corn. I've had a 20lb bag of rice sitting around, just waiting for a beer to be made with it. The original recipe was from Jeff Renner. So here's my take on the recipe for 11 gallons:

Your Mother's Mustache
5lbs 6-row barley
10lbs 2-row
5lbs rice
1.15 oz Galena 13.1%AA hops
1oz Williamette 4.8% AA hops
Munich lager yeast


I did a cereal mash of the rice with 1 lb of the 6-row, basically cooking it to gelatinize the starches so they could be converted to sugar in the main mash. I should mention that I used 4 gallons of reverse-osmosis water to dilute the 4.25 gallons of tap water. I also added 4 grams of gypsum and 4 grams of CaCl to bring the mash pH down. Check your own water profile before you make any adjustments.


The mash was multi-step:

122F Protein rest 30 minutes
144F Beta rest 20 minutes
158F Alpha rest 40 minutes


I came in a little low on my protein rest (120F) and the Beta rest (141F), and I didn't want to add more hot water to bring it up, because I knew my mash tun would be completely full after the addition of the cereal mash to bring it up to the alpha rest. I compensated on the alpha rest by adding the cereal mash at a hotter temperature (185F vs 175F). Also, the alpha rest was more like 50 minutes because I forgot to heat the sparge water right away. I fell asleep at the wheel, but in my defense, I'm not used to doing cereal mashes, so I had already heated water twice, once for the main mash, and once for the cereal mash. That is all I normally do, once for an infusion mash, and once for the sparge. By the time I realized I needed to heat sparge water, I was a half hour into the alpha rest.

The hopping schedule was:

1.15 oz Galena 60 minutes
0.5 oz Williamette 10 minutes
0.5 oz Williamette 0 minutes (added at flameout)

My pre-boil gravity was 1.048 for 13 gallons, giving an efficiency of 85%, a lot higher than normal. I'm guessing this is because of the multi-step mash, plus the fact that I had a high water-to-grain ratio for the final step. Post-boil original gravity was 1.054, right in the middle of the range for this style.

I used the 3rd runnings (I batch sparged) for a separate brew, a cream ale. I added dry malt extract to the boil of that to get it up to a decent gravity. I'll post that recipe tomorrow.

Buttery?

I got my scoresheets back from the Upper Mississippi Mashout.

• Tottenham Mild 32


• Sloppy Terry's Cream Ale 31


• Decemberfest (in mead category) 26.6


• Decemberfest (in specialty beer category) 24.5

I wasn't hoping for much from the Decemberfest, it was kind of a mistake beer, but I thought I would enter anyway to cover some categories for the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year. (You have to enter 10 different categories throughout the year to be in the running). The other two were rated near the low end of the "very good" category, and I have had beers take a 3rd or 2nd place with scores in the low 30's, but as I mentioned in another post, they failed to place.

I thought that most of the score sheets came back with fair assessments of the beers, with the exception of one on the Tottenham mild. One of the judges (out of 3) decided that it had a "diacetyl problem", causing an overpowering buttery flavor. He gave it a 29, the other judges rated it 32 and 34. I'm not sure where this opinion came from. I taste no diacetyl in the beer at all, and neither of the other judges mentioned diacetyl or buttery at all on their score sheets. Also interestingly, one judge said the beer was too carbonated, and another said it was not carbonated enough. Strange.

I will enter the Tottenham in another competition; I still think it's good enough to win. Maybe in the next contest I won't get a judge with butter on his brain.

It's frickin' cold in my basement!

I just made a starter for the lager I plan to brew next weekend. I've decided to brew all my lagers in a row this year for a couple of reasons.

1. I can reuse the yeast saving some expense and time.
2. It's frickin' cold in my basement!

In the past, I had made lagers throughout the year. I would time them so I had free space in my freezer chest/converted kegerator to ferment cool and lager cold. It would also guarantee that I always had something on tap because I would alternate a lager which takes a lot longer with some ales that were done fairly quickly. It dawned on me that I was causing myself a lot of extra trouble shifting things in and out of the kegerator, and constantly adjusting the temperature if I was fermenting or lagering. I also realized that my basement in winter is a perfect temperature for fermenting lagers, and that I could keep the kegerator a little colder than normal when lagering, and still be able to use it to serve my other beers. As far as keeping something on tap, I decided to do split lager/ale batches, hence my Anglerman Ale made at the same time as the Johann Sebastian Bock. Next week I'm going to do a split Classic American Pilsner (CAP) and a Cream Ale.

So how frickin' cold is it in my basement? I take two readings, the first of which I call the WOF temperature. WOF stands for water-on-floor, which is exactly what it sounds like, it's the temperature of a 500ml glass bottle of water sitting on the concrete slab floor. WOF today was 46 degrees fahrenheit. I also take a WOT temperature reading. WOT is the temperature of a 500ml glass bottle of water sitting on an approximately 3 foot high wooden table in the basement. (Water-on-table, but you already guessed that, didn't you?) WOT was most recently observed at 50F. I measure water temperature instead of air temperature, because I'm sure the air temperature varies a lot more.

Now the yeast fermenting wort into beer create their own heat, so fermentation temperatures are going to be slightly higher, and I adjust accordingly. I'm going to put the starters and the pilsner on the table, even with the heat of fermentation, they should stay below 55F. I'll ferment the cream ale upstairs in my brew closet. For later lagers, I'll place them on the floor. I should be good until about April 1st, when last year the WOF was 54.

Soy un perdidor...

I'm a loser baby. I entered the Upper Mississippi Mashout with 4 entries, and not a single one placed. I'm not surprised about two of the entries, they were just ok, but I thought that Sloppy Terry's Cream Ale and Tottenham mild were ribbon winners. We'll see what the scoresheets say when I get them back in the mail. The results are listed in a PDF here. Congratulations to the homebrewers who did win.

Upper Mississippi Mash-Out Beers Shipped!

I walked down to the local UPS store and shipped my entries for the Upper Mississippi Mash-Out. Of course it's about a mile a way, I'm carrying two boxes full of fragile bottles (I shipped some beer to my brother in Southern California too), and I'm walking Bosworth the Wonder Dog at the same time. (See label photos). The boxes had a combined weight of 19 pounds, which doesn't seem like a whole lot, unless you're carrying it precariously balanced with a extremely energetic 60 pound Portuguese Water Dog, who has chosen this very moment to act all crazy psycho, snapping at the leash, pulling as hard as he can, lunging and snapping at other dogs met along the walk. Somehow we made it.

Here's what I entered:

Decemberfest--an Oktoberfest with honey and maple. (Don't ask--actually do ask, I'll post the story how this came about sometime soon).
This was entered in two categories, 23 Specialty Beer, and 26C Other Mead.

Sloppy Terry's Cream Ale--named after my long time (24 years) friend Terry, aka T. Francis. I brewed this beer for his wedding in November and had a few bottles left over. I wish I had saved more, it's a mighty fine cream ale.

Tottenham Mild--Another long time (32 years) friend, Matt, is a big fan of the Tottenham Hotspur soccer club. He helped me brew the first (extract) version of this, and now it's all grain, all grow's up. Tasty, but maybe bittered a little too much to win.

Stay tuned to see how they do in the competition.