I haven’t been making beer on a regular basis for maybe 10 years now. Last January I got back into it with a friend but after getting all of the gear bought and one batch made we just didn’t seem to find time until now, a year later, to do a second batch each.
This time around I am trying something a bit more involved. I wanted to do something with honey as a component, and found a few recipies. I’m basing my Hoppy Bee Brew on the Beer Cabinet Bee Brew recipie on that page.
Since I wandered quite a bit astray from that recipe, it should have it’s own name. I call my creation ….
Hoppy Bee Brew
Ingredients
250 g Viena Malt
500 g Pale Malt
1.7 Kg Morgans Indian Pale Ale Kit (1 tin of malt extract syrup)
1.0 Kg Dark Dry Malt Extract
1.0 Kg Light Dry Malt Extract
1.0 Kg Clover Honey
15g Cascade hop pellets 5.9% Alpha Acid Content
45g Galena hop pellets (12.3% AA)
15g Saaz hop pellets (3.5% AA)
Process
Day 1
- Mash-in grains with 2.5 gallons of 70C water.
- Hold at 70C for 30 minutes then strain and sparge with 1/2 gallon boiling water.
- Add extracts and honey, bring to boil for 10 minutes.
- Add cascade hops, boil for 30 minutes.
- Add galena hops, boil for 15 minutes.
- Turn heat off, add saaz hops and steep for 3 minutes.
- Transfer to primary fermenter and top up with cold filtered water to make 25L total.
- Wait for the temperature to drop below 29C before pitching the yeast that came with the IPA kit.
This came out to approximately sg: 1.069 = alchohol content potential of 9%
Not the heaviest beer I’ve ever made (that was in the 1.1 or 1.2 sg range) but I’m aiming for something a bit hoppy, a bit sweet, a bit brown, a bit .. aww, who am I kidding. I’m not sure what I’m going to end up with. Other than “some type of brown beer” 
Boiling the wort
Making beer Stew!
Mmmmmm, malt.
Cooling the wort, Canadian method.
Of course you have to sample some kind of beer while performing the brewing process. Unfortunately Ralph chose … poorly. [zathrus]This is … wrong beer (Ruddles County). No No no, never use this.[/zathrus]
Day 2
Wort after 24 hours of fermentation.
Day 7
Transfer to the glass carboy for another week or two. sg 1.030
We’ve got at least 4% alcohol already, whoo hoo. It’s decidedly malty in flavour and leaning towards the red end of the spectrum. I may need to change the name of this recipe once it’s been bottled and had a chance to age before being consumed in a home brew bottle draining frenzy.
Day … er… 14? 21? No, I think it was 19.
My beer cleared a bit but the sg is still 1.030 at bottling time. Yummy taste. Will have to wait a month now for it to carbonate up and age a bit.
Yummy but not enough fizz (carbonation). There’s little to no head at all, although you can taste a bit of carbonation.
Honey taste no longer present after the first round of tasting a couple of weeks ago.
Still very nice flavourful beer. Must drink more. more beeer. Beeeeer.
trever
June 2nd, 2006
OMG I can’t believe how GOOD this beer turned out after it had aged just a few more weeks. It’s all gone now but it had a nice complex flavour. If you could get over the initial HI-IM-HOPPY swig.
As Melvin put it “First taste, Yuck. Second taste, hey! Yum!”
trever
November 15th, 2006