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Teaching Ale Update
After a few (far too many) weeks, we finally re-racked the Teaching Ale. It was fairly straightforward. Just as before, we meticulously cleaned and sanitized everything that will touch the young beer. We cleaned the keg and a hose. To siphon the beer, we first moved the carboy to a the counter and the keg […]
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Teaching Brewing
Photos from the brew courtesy of Micah Eckhardt This Friday and Saturday the Media Lab hosted its first Festival of Learning and I volunteered to teach beer brewing. I’m hoping to use this post as a repository for some of the content covered and some of the information I skipped over in the handout. This […]
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Graff
Mike and I decided we wanted to brew up a hard cider for the winter. In contrast to most commercial American ciders, we wanted to put together a hard, tart cider. The closest commercial examples we found were British ciders. We found French and Belgian ciders to be nice, but we didn’t really like their […]
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Beer
Brewing is an excellent hobby. It develops knowledge of chemistry, thermodynamics and biology and the result is quite delicious. On this page, you’ll find a brief overview of equipment, recipes, and techniques we’ve developed. My friends and I have brewed around a dozen batches, so take the following advice with a small grain of salt. […]
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MARK VIII – Belgian Tripel IPA
This is an attempt at a Belgian Tripel IPA. There are only a few commercial examples including Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel, Urthel Hop-It. We brewed Wednesday Feb 17, 2010. Shooting for around 8.8% ABV, 58 IBUs. Hopville Recipe 6:23 2# Belgian Pale, 2# Belgian Pils in medium grain sock placed in 3 gallons of […]
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MARK VII – Amber IPA
This started as a Sweetwater IPA clone, but again, got changed around and became more of a Amber IPA. We’ve started using hopville to design the recipes. The methodology goes somewhat like this: find hint of clone recipe (alcohol, color, HBUs), use suggested hop profile, design malts for color and alcohol. Our hopville recipe is […]
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Mark VI – American Pils “B-Day Brew”
Mitch and I had our hearts set on brewing up a SweetWater IPA clone, but Hop City’s homebrew supplies were nearly cleaned out. We still wanted to brew so we threw together a recipe based loosely around Whitey’s Pale Ale. Brewed the day before my birthday (9/20/2009). The actual recipe bears nearly no semblance to […]
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MARK V – Leftover Ale
After doing four batches we had a few leftover ingredients. From those was born this ale. Brewed July 23, 2009 9:45 PM 8.5 ounces crystal malt 90 lovibond in grain bag placed into 2.5 gallons bottled spring water in the wort pot. Began heating wort to 160-170° F. 10:14 PM Wort at 160° F. Kept […]
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MARK IV – Whitey’s Gone Fishin’ Pale Ale
This one is in bottles right now! It was loosely based on “Whitey’s Gone Fishin’ Pale Ale” found in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Again, we couldn’t help but make some changes. Brewed July 12, 2009 6:45 PM Two gallons of bottled spring water, six pounds golden light Briss malt extract, 0.6 lbs Alexander’s Sun […]
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MARK III – American Amber Ale
This was our first beer where we constructed the recipe ourselves. It is loosely modeled after an American Ale from the Complete Joy of Homebrewing. We of course made some changes. Brewed May 13, 2009 9:10PM 8oz crystal malt added to 2.5 gallons of water. Water temp brought to 160-170 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeast pouch activated […]
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MARK II – Brewer’s Best English Brown Ale
Better than Mark I, still had some off flavors. Suspect this is from pouring the wort over two gallons of commercial ice to cool it.
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MARK I – Brewer’s Best American Ale
For our first recipe, we chose a “kit” (like making a cake from a box) from Brewer’s Best – and American Ale. This was a good call. Though it turns out that you can essentially completely make up a recipe, starting with a kit built confidence to develop our own brews. The first batch, brewed […]