brew #009: oil change caramel cream ale

This beer turned out to be an experiment in more ways than one. The idea came from a collaboration between Brian and I after he suggested his mom’s caramel as an ingredient. After some thought, I thought it would be interesting to attempt to make my first cream ale. The combination of the two brings us this caramel cream ale complete with a whopping pound of Cannon’s mom’s homemade caramel.
In addition to some wild ideas, this also turned out to be my first all grain brew with my newly completed mash tun (pics will follow shortly). I used a standard medium body single infusion mash (my goal is to stay around 80% efficiency) and my cooler did a fairly good job maintaining temp. My homemade temperature controller was used to monitor the temperature – although I will be purchasing a floating thermometer next time I make it to the LHBS.
The mash went unbelieveably easy but my faults in this beer may be two fold: one a wacked-out reciepe that doesn’t bring the creamy caramel profile I was aiming for (who knows maybe it will settle in the bottle), two Cannon’s mom’s caramel had some mystery amount in butter in it. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the sheen on my boil. Eck. I’ve done my best to rack carefully and will be doing a hell-of-ah crash cooling run to see if we can recover a bit. Regardless, it was one heck of a great experience.


Ingredients
Fermentables
2.00 lb Wheat Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) 21.6 % [Had laying around...added during boil]
5.00 lb Pale Malt – 2 Row – US (2.0 SRM) 54.1 %
1.00 lb Caramel Malt (40.0 SRM) 10.8 %
1.00 lb Pale Malt – 6 Row – US (2.0 SRM) 10.8 %
0.25 lb Milk Sugar (Into secondary) 2.7 %
1.00 lb Homemade Caramel via Cannon’s mom [unfortunately buttery :/]
Hops
1.00 oz Cascade [7.50%] (60 min) 27.3 IBU
Misc
1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)
1.00 oz Vanilla Extract (Secondary)
1.50 tsp Gypsum (Strike/Sparge)
Yeast
1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [Yeast cake]


The Brew
Soundtrack: Dan Potthast
Brew Beer: Metropolitan Flywheel, Great Divide Hoss


Stats
Batch Size: 5 gal
Mash: Single Infusion, ~1.25 qt/lb [~8.75 qt into 6lb] , 154F, 60min
Sparge: 5.60 gal, 168F, 15min
Mash pH: I BOUGHT THE WRONG TEST STRIPS ARGGG
Boil Duration: 60min
Preboil Gravity: 1.029 [78% efficiency]
Original Gravity: 1.056 [1.057 projected]
Final Gravity: 1.012
Est. ABV: 5.7%
IBU: >27 [Tinseth]
Color: 9 SRM
Fermentation: 5 days in primary at 68F, 7 days in secondary at 68F, 1 day at 50F
Brewed: 8/31/09
Bottled: ?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 9:04 pm and is filed under brew stats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.