New Double IPA Kit

Do you have a favorite IPA that comes from California? Chances are it may be a beer from Stone, Port, Alpine, Coronado, Green Flash, Alesmith, or Ballast Point.  California seems to be running the shows as far as IPA’s go. Being born and raised in the beautiful state of Washington, I have had the chance to experience many great local breweries with some great IPA’s such as our Diamond Knot IPA kit from…you guessed it, The Diamond Knot Brewery, as well as many other breweries around Washington.

However, when walking through a specialty beer shop in the IPA section, California seems to be the dominant producer of great IPA’s.

Check out this article where brewer Tim Gormley formulates another great IPA concoction http://store.homebrewheaven.com/articles/All_Grain_Recipe_Formulation_San_Diego_IPA.htm

Watch “That Guy” as he racks The Seattle Rain beer. During the video he explains some useful tips about sanitizing with iodine and calculating your alcohol by volume.

Our New Seattle Rain Beer Kit!

On Saturday “That Guy” Seth Hall, decided he would film another one of our YouTube videos while brewing our new kit, The Seattle Rain Beer. While he was rinsing out a growler we had lying around from a local brewery, Just by coincidence the Owner/President of that  brewery “The Diamond Knot” Bob Maphet stopped by our shop. We explained to him how we were filming a YouTube video and asked if he would like to guest star. Without hesitation Bob accepted. He helped Seth sparge the specialty grains and the brew continued.  It ended up being a successful brew day as well as a successful video. Check it out!

How to Cool Chicken Stock

After deciding brewing beer was not an option this weekend (fermenters full). I decided I had enough left over chicken bones and vegetables that I decided to make some homemade chicken stock.

I grabbed one of our 5 gallon stock pots and our stainless steel wort chillers and spent Sunday making some delicious Asian style chicken stock. The recipe was as follows;

6 lbs chicken bones

3gallons water

3Yellow Onions

15 scallions

8 oz ginger

Tbsp whole black peppercorns

Kosher Salt

1 Daikon Radish

6 Garlic Cloves

Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and skim as necessary. Once six hours have past, the chicken carcass should fall apart and the bones break easily.

I put ht stainless wort chiller directly into the stock pot and started to cool the chicken stock. I must admit that this was definitely the best way to cool chicken stock. Instead of putting the pot in a sink full of ice water and constantly stirring the broth,  I was able to cool the chicken stock in 15 minutes. I used our 10 ¼” strainer lined with a reusable nylon straining bag to strain the broth, I actually strained it into my 8 gallon stock pot with a stainless spigot kit was poured the stock into 1 gallon rubber maid containers.

Cooling the Stock

Straining Stock

The Kitchen Sink

After doing some yard work on Saturday I decided it was time to head over to the shop and pick out a batch of beer. As usual, I didn’t have any plans on what I was going to make. At first I thought I would brew a hefeweizen considering it was a supposed to be warm the next couple of days and unfortunately I do not have a temperature controlled fermentation area. I do not mind a hefeweizen getting a little estery.

After some time had passed and I still couldn’t decide what to brew. I asked one of the guys at the shop for some suggestions on what I should brew. My friend Tim had said he always wanted to use a little bit of every grain we carry at Homebrew Heaven. Considering I had already had a couple beers, the idea sounded awesome!

I am not going to right out every grain on the recipe but it was essentially;

1.5 lbs every specialty grain Homerew Heaven carries (around .5 of an ounce each I did not use a scale).

8.5 lbs of 2-row

2 oz Crystal Leaf Hops @3.5 AA(60 min bittering)

2oz Crystal Leaf Hops @3.5 AA (10 min flavoring)

2 oz Crystal Leaf Hops @3.5 AA (0 min finishing)

# 1728 Scottish Ale Yeast

This may look like a strange recipe to you, but that’s only because it is. I was given a 1 lb bag of Crystal Leaf hops due to some mix up with an order from our supplier.  As for the Scottish Ale Yeast, It was reused from my previous Scottish Ale I had brewed the week before.

On Sunday is when I started the brew, this was around 9:00 am. I wanted to get started pretty early due to the fact it was Mothers Day and I had plans with my mother for dinner.

After I had just finished mashing and sparging my grains into my brew pot, I realized that I had forgotten to screw my kettle screen in to the brewpot to strain out the hops. When only using leaf hops (pellet hops can clog the screen), I like to use the kettle screen. After thinking for a moment, I remembered I had some nylon straining bags that I had left over from winemaking season. As it turns out, our nylon straining bag fits our 8 gallon pots perfectly.

After looking at this, I thought it was going to work out beautifully, but wait… what am I going to do when I have to put my wort chiller into pot? My chiller sits on the bottom of the pot, won’t it burn?  There was only one way to find out.

After bringing the pot up to a boil with the chiller in It, I felt pretty confident there was not going to be any problems. Away went the first addition of Crystal Hops.

Everything went ok. I chilled the beer down after my last addition of hops, hit the wort with 30 seconds of pure oxygen using my oxygenation system, added my Scottish Ale slurry from the beer I had transferred while sparging and viola!

yeast slurry.