Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [128]
Prime with sugar and bottle. If kegging, you may add optional keg hops to your keg by placing them into a sanitized hop bag (nylon stockings can work well) and then into your keg. Prime and let naturally carbonate at 70 degrees F (21 C) for 3 to 5 days or until carbonated.
“Hop whompus?” and thank you, Jeff Bagby.
STONE 03.03.03 VERTICAL EPIC ALE
Lee Chase, Head Brewer
Lee Chase. Courtesy Stone Brewing Co.
THERE ARE several guidelines, recipes and homebrew “challenges” on Stone’s website (www.stonebrewing.com). Among them are recipes for their annual “Stone Vertical Epic” series of beers. Here is the 2003 Vertical Epic released on March 3, 2003, with commentary (in italics) from head brewer Lee Chase.
Recipe adapted from Stone Brewing Company’s website
All right, now this is going to be a little different than last year’s (OK, a LOT different!!). By now you might know that these “Vertical” beers are not just the same recipe as each other, they are designed to be quite different from each other. We are not trying to make the recipe as difficult to brew as possible (we’re not doing triple decoctions, or aging them in oak barrels for three years…yet!). Instead we’re just trying to make what we think is a great beer, and have a little fun in the process. So read on, and do the best you can. That’s kind of what I did…
Adapted from a recipe at www.stonebrewing.com
TARGET ORIGINAL GRAVITY: 1.078 (19 B)
APPROXIMATE FINAL GRAVITY: 1.014 (3.5 B)
IBU: ABOUT 48
APPROXIMATE COLOR: 17 SRM (34 EBC)
ALCOHOL: 8.2% BY VOLUME
All-Grain Recipe for 5 gallons (19 l)
12 lbs.: (5.4 kg) 2-row pale malt
12 oz.: (340 g) flaked wheat
6 oz.: (168 g) Belgian Special-B malt
4 oz.: (113 g) chocolate wheat malt
0.85 oz.: (24 g) Warrior hops 16% alpha (13.6 HBU/380 MBU)—75 minutes boiling
¼ oz.: (7 g) Centennial hop pellets—dry hopping
½ oz.: (14 g) freshly crushed whole coriander seed
½ oz.: (14 g) freshly crushed grains of paradise (alligator pepper)
0.2 oz.: (6 g) freshly crushed whole coriander seed—added with dry hops
0.2 oz.: (6 g) freshly crushed grains of paradise (alligator pepper)—added with dry hops
¼ tsp.: (1 g) powdered Irish moss
White Labs Abbey Ale 500 yeast
Stone “house yeast” cultured from one of their bottle-conditioned ales
¾ cup: (175 ml measure) corn sugar (priming bottles) or 0.33 cups (80 ml) corn sugar for kegging
If at all possible (and at Stone, it is), put on the Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys song “What’s a Matter with the Mill?” (Lyrics: Took my wheat down to get it ground/the man who runs the mill said the mill’s broke down/what’s a matter with the mill?/it done broke down/what’s a matter with the mill?/it done broke down/can’t get no grind…tell me what’s a matter with the mill.)
A one-step infusion mash is employed to mash the grains. Add 13 quarts (12.4 l) of 168-degree F (76 C) water to the crushed grain, stir, stabilize and hold the temperature at 152 degrees F (66.5 C) for 60 minutes. Then raise temperature to 167 degrees F (75 C), lauter and sparge with 3.5 gallons (13.5l) of 170-degree F (77 C) water.
I have found that the use of some down-home sounds from the Hot Club of Cowtown can also help to influence a smooth runoff and a faster conversion.
Collect about 5.5 gallons (21 l) of runoff. Bring to a full and vigorous boil. After 15 minutes of boiling, add your 75-minute hops.
You want to achieve a full rolling (radical) boil, and what we have found to help is putting on the Gogol Bordello song “Radical.” Believe it or not, it can get the temperature up to 214 degrees if it is loud enough! My theory is that the Russian sound makes the wort think it is colder than it really is, so it lets in a little more heat than normal…
The total boil time will be 90 minutes. When 10 minutes remain, add the Irish moss.
Go ahead and let the Gogol Bordello play out while you are getting the spices