It’s a flavorful bitterness more than a bitter bitterness, but it’s still definitely strong.
It was originally going to be a much lighter color, but at the last minute, we decided to throw in two ounces of the black patent malt we had on hand from our first-ever batch, and I think the lovely amber we got fully justifies the half-baked idea.
A malt heavy IPA? You have my attention sir.
I too, am sold. :)
And for what it’s worth, every beer I cold crashed my my kegerator came out AMAZING like that. I use whirlfloc in every kettle brew, but by itself, it just doesn’t get that clear. So the cold crashing was an amazing extra step for that. Nice job man, you can even read some text written on the opposite side of the glass.
It’s been getting rave reviews, too. If I had more bottles left, I’d devise some way to share it.
I’m finally getting the one part of my basement a little closer to brewery-ready, and one of the items is going to be a chest freezer for fermentation temperature control and cold-crashing. It’s going to be a little tight—the area is only 9’x9’6", and part of that is going to be general basement shelving—but we’re really looking forward to having a dedicated space. The biggest obstacle remaining is that I need to get my wife on board with buying a new upstairs stove so the current stove can become the brewing stove. (Stovetop does limit us in terms of batch size, and it’s possible my stove isn’t going to have enough oomph to handle a 6- or 7-gallon boil, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.)
The process improvement for the brown ale in the fermenter right now was a foam control product, which seems to be working perfectly—with a full packet of dry yeast, we haven’t had any blow-off.
I looked up (in the past) how much i could do on my stovetop indoors. Unfortunately I’m limited by having electric, and it wasn’t the volume that would be an issue, it was the time getting to temp or to boil. I’ve seen people who push things to the limit a bit by doing stovetop PLUS having an immersion heater plugged into a different circuit. That seems both dangerous and a bit like overkill. At that point you’re making an electric brewery you could have crafted outside of needing the stove in the first place.
If you’re going into the basement already, why not have an electrician drop in a run for a 30A, 240-250V circuit and upgrade a kettle with it’s own heating element? That way you’d be getting a device that will put that power to JUST your brewing, not as part of other power draws that the devices is rated for, like a stove/oven.
You’re veering into home brewery territory anyway, and electric sure would be nice, especially if you can dial in some control on it.
There are some calculators around for brewing that will get you BTU’s needed, or time to boil based on BTU, etc. The problem is that an average stove burner has about 7000 BTUs. A gas stove can go up to about 15K BTU, sometimes a little more. While a typical homebrew gas burner has about 50K BTU or more, with some up to 80K BTU. All of that means you could boil on the stove, but it might take you 2 hours to bring to boil, not very efficient for brew day.
Happily, we have a hookup for a gas stove in the basement, in addition to the hookup we’re using for our gas dryer, both in addition to a 240v outlet the previous owner used for his dryer.
We’ve had good success on my buddy’s gas stove so far; putting the kettle over two burners usually means we take about an hour for heating between tap->mash and mash->boil. The one which the basement brewery will inherit is older and has smaller burners, though, so it may not have quite the same oomph.
If I had unlimited money, I would probably see about a restaurant-style soup pot burner—those are in the same 80k BTU range, and more compact than a full stove to boot. Electric is certainly a good backup plan, though, and may become a future plan if we ever want to scale up our batches.
Here’s how it’ll look when it’s done.
Okay, you INDEED are all set for a brewery!
Do you have a stove vent down there or anyway to rig one up?
Not yet. I’m hoping a fan is sufficient. If not, we’ll drill a hole in the wall behind the stove and put in a vent hood.
Either way, I like your layout, and hoping you’ll post pics as you add to the setup there.
Gents, this is going to be one worth seeking out.
EDIT: Adding a pic, since the URL didn’t link with a snippet.
New Holland’s Dragons Milk, with a special release of Banana Coconut
This fall, a new limited release rises from the wood – New Holland Banana Coconut Dragon’s Milk . As the name suggests, the brewery aged the imperial stout on bananas, plantains, and coconuts. This fall pastry stout is 11% alcohol by volume.
New Holland Banana Coconut Dragon’s Milk is available in 12-ounce bottles and draft as a limited release.
Style: Imperial Stout (w/ Bananas. Plantains. Coconuts. Barrel Aged. Bourbon.)
Hops: Nugget, Brewer’s Gold
Malts: 2-row, Munich, Caramel, Flaked Barley, Chocolate, Black and HoneyAvailability: 12oz Bottles, Draft. Limited Release.
Debut: September 201811% ABV, 30 IBUs
Might have to make the trek downtown to their tap room to check that one out!
I have a buddy who works for Founders who happened to have had it recently, he gave a big nod of approval.
Do you know how coconut it is? I love normal Dragon’s Milk but I am not into coconut. If it’s heavy on that flavor I would sit it out.
I do not. I’ve yet to get it. I’ve had a pretty wide range of coconut beers though from -slight- like NoDa’s Coco Loco Porter, to heavy, like Catawba’s King Coconut Porter. The latter tastes like a Mounds bar, so VERY coconut intense.
Now you speak my language! That’s a beautiful color you’ve got going there.
Mine, too, truth be told. I appreciate hops more than I used to, but I’ve always favored dark and malty beers. I’m excited for this part of the year, when the summertime pales and hop monsters take their annual vacation.
Nice one!
Back in the, “experiment with everything,” phase, I dumped quite a bit of very nice cocoa powder into a rudimentary all-grain brown ale kit I had from Northern Brewer. It was at least 4oz of cocoa if not more. And the result was a very well liked beer among my friends. I thought the chocolate killed a lot of the malt flavor, but then brewing it again without an additions, that kit seemed to be missing a bit, or I just didn’t hit the marks with it.
Brown ales are solid, from wonderful malty flavors to being able to carry hops if you lean in that direction. Nothing says fall like brown ales, to me (though some would argue marzen and pumpkin beers.)
NE “Hazy” IPAs took over the Mikkeller Brewery last I was there a couple weeks ago. They really are quite different from the west coast IPA or San Diego Double/Imperial IPAs.
More fruity instead of piney, or soapy.
In the brown beer vein, picked up some Bell’s Double Cream Stout. They’re all gone now…
