4 Dog Pub Ale 2 - Robobrew , Friday, July 31, 2020

Slight variation of my pilot brews for this west coast style. Brewing the previous batch on Mr. Robobrew in a couple of days. This and all of these brews have the most hops I have ever used. Taste is good so far, but only if you like hops :)

The milled grain is too course. My efficiency went way down. Notch 4 for now on no matter what grain I use. I will re-mill my already milled grain for Sunday, Aug. 2.

Ingredients

11 lbs. 0i0

12 ozs. Wheat

8 ozs. Honey Malt

17 g Chinook at 60 min.

15 g Chinook at 20 min.

15 g Chinook at 15 min.

15 g Chinook at 10 min.

15 g Chinook at 5 min.

73 g Chinook hop back - ( around 5 - 10 min chilling )

US-05 - 15 g

CA - 57 

MG - 5

S04 - 99

CI - 44

PH - 5.45

Very similar to the previous one. Definitely not enough darker specialty grains. The next one is darker, but it is too early to say anything about the maltiness I am looking for.

O.G. - 1.040 - ( Milled on notch 3, now on notch 4 )

F.G. -

% - 

SRM - 4.4

BU - 42

I think I want to brew a darker brew than 4 - 5 SRM. Seems kind of light and thin to me. I will taste this and if it isn't malty enough, I will up the specialty grains. If it is, I will go back to using Special III to get back to around 7 - 8 SRM. This is what pilot brews are all about, to see how it looks and tastes and make minor tweeks along the way. Wort tasted fine, but don't they all? I added extra ice to a bucket to pre-cool my wort and it was still 74 F. I have lived here for 28 years and this is the first time I have had to delay adding yeast due to not being cool enough. I could not ferment beer without that fridge of mine.

                                                 Pitched US-05 at 5:30 pm

Aug 1 - No activity . Did not check it when locking up.

Aug 2 - Fermenting this morning. It most likely started late last night.

Aug 4 - Going real good. Some krausen blowing off too. Temp now is set to 68 F. It seems to get too

             cold when I set it to 66 F. 68 F for now, will see how it goes.

Aug. 5 - Krausen starting to fall a bit. Still going at a slow and steady pace.

Aug. 11 - Done. I think I will keg this as it seems to be done and it is very hot and humid outside.

                                             Kegged on Friday, August 15.

Taste is fine, but hazy. Needs gelatin to clear it. My previous IPA was okay, kind of hoppy with no malt taste. This may be the same, but the one after that should have lots of malt in the taste. I hope to get this down so I can make lots more to use up these hops. I will not buy Chinook hops again, I find them kind of wild or weedy. Cascade next time if I even want to brew this style of beer. There are so many beers of this kind out there to buy, I may not want to make them. Depends on how good my Czech lagers taste.

                                                         ADDED GELATIN ON AUG 15

I had a taste of this uncarbed. A big taste of wild/vegetal Chinook hops. I hope it goes away, or at least mellows out. For some reason, the honey malt taste is non-existent or too low. I kind of get the impression I didn't use enough honey malt in this one and the same for the previous one. Mr. Robobrew has always magnified my specialty grains to the extent that they all tasted too malty. There seems to be a sweet spot I am not hitting. The next brew may be better. If not, hit it with a larger amount of specialty grains and hope to hit that sweet spot. I do think that a larger amount of CaraMunich I, II will go a long way. 

                           SEEMS OKAY TODAY

Turned nasty near the end of the keg. No idea why. Working on neutral hops for bittering and the new Cryo hops for a hop creep.