Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager (Clone)- This beer is one of Al L's favorites, so he decided to brew 5 for the club meeting in May and 5 for himself. It's a Cooper's extract version from the "Clone Brews" book that was altered by doubling the Munton's chocolate and Briess black patent malts. And while Al was brewing this batch, Steve was outside on a wonderful February day brewing a 10 gal all-grain version. Steve transferred his beer to secondary on March 13th and this beers been placed in the lagering cellar at an undisclosed, very secret location. Flavor profile at transfer was phenomenal.  A side by side taste test against an actual Dixie Blackened Voodoo is planned. Al's beer will be the featured beer at the May North Chautauqua HomeBrewer's club meeting. It should be a good opportunity to do side by side by side taste tests with the commercial version and both the extract and all-grain versions. This recipe came out close enough that I'll spend time tweaking it to the original.

13 Pound Sticke- What happens when you take 13 lbs of malt at 78% extraction efficiency, add noble flavor hops and ferment on White Labs Dusseldorf Alt yeast? You get hit with a 13 lb Sticke. This beer resulted from research conducted while Steve was preparing to brew his Dusseldorf Alt. That beer mysteriously disappeared over a 2 week period at the store. Sticke means secret in Deutsch. That's because the beer was only brewed 2 times a year and was advertised as available only by a sign in the German bars that read "Sticke hier". Then it was gone. This beer will be bottled, not on tap. It's too good- if the taste at transfer is any indication. But if you are at the right place- at the right time- you never know. Maybe you'll see the "Sticke hier" sign. 

Kolsch- This is one of Steve's favorite beers. He keeps trying to get the recipe right. Okay, so he's made some bad ones, but he doesn't give up. Once you've tasted what Steve thinks was the perfect Kolsch, well, he just has to keep trying. This beer's recipe was taken from "Brewing Classic Styles" and altered just a bit to include 10% wheat malt. After brewing it was pitched onto a White Labs Kolsch yeast cake (see above) and allowed to ferment at a cool temp. (The back room floor was holding temps at about 53 degrees.) Beer was transferred the last week of January. It tasted great coming out of primary- Crisp, Citric, Fruity, Refreshing. Beer will be kegged before the end of the week of March 8th.

Me Love You Long Time Honey- A beer born on a Friday night conversation at the Dunkirk HomeBrew Shoppe. What better way to celebrate classic Vietnam War era movies than by stealing a line from "Full Metal Jacket" and crafting a beer around it. This is an example of taking an idea and running with it until.... Well the jury is still out on this beer. A lot of time and energy went into recipe formulation and label development. Not to mention all the used bottles that had to be de-labelled. It is brewed as an Oatmeal Cream Stout with lactose and honey. Somehow the interaction created a (just hold the groans and what else statements here) slightly sour beer. It does finish nicely and the flavor,not unpleasant, lasts "a long time." Cody Britton of Southpaw Signs took Steve's and Jim M's simple label design and created a work of art. I don't know if the beer is worthy of the label, but hey. You may want to take an antibiotic after drinking this one.

Braggot- Al L and Steve threw this together back in June '09 and finally bottled after Al's return from Down Under in January '10. This was a second attempt at Braggot. The initial batch was brewed in June of '08 from 12 lbs of honey and one 3.3 lb can of Cooper'sLight malt with a Cascade hop addition at 20 minutes left and pitched with Nottingham yeast. Story is they created a separate category for this cross between beer and mead "because it was so good." This version was altered. We substituted Cooper's Amber Malt and used Red Star Champagne yeast. The current version is much drier and obviously with a higher alcohol content. We shouldn't have played with apparent perfection though. I'll be making another batch soon using an all-grain version utilizing some Munich malt, but going back to the Nottingham yeast. There's not always some at the shoppe as it still needs some conditioning time.

Wee Heavy Scotch Ale- Steve resurrected a personal recipe from 1998 to brew this one. It was a "Best of Show" winner at the 1998 Chautauqua County Fair. The beer is thick and silky with a wonderful malt presence. The Alcohol content is evident. He bottled it back in October and brings some out now and again. The beer is kept in a secured cabinet with ultramodern high tech surveillance and alarms. He hopes there will be some left for Christmas. It's a hard beer to make all grain. The mash tun has difficulty handling 35 lbs of malt for 10 gallons. Steve only made 5 gallons this run. The recipe can be found at brewery.org under Cat's Meow recipe collection.

Your Father's Moustache- Cody B and Steve planned on brewing 10 gallons of this beer on March 13th. Steve and Cody got a yeast starter going on March 6th and Steve figured what better way to grow yeast than brew beer. So on March 8th, Steve pulled out the recipe books and started his step mash  version of Your Father's Moustache. It's a pre-prohibition lager that Jeff Renner resurrected from research he conducted. It was an 8 hour brew day, and that didn't include clean-up. So 5 gallons were created that Monday. Now that provided plenty of yeast for a 10 gallon batch of .....

Your Father's Moustache- Executive decisions had to be made. The store got busy early and Cody and Steve decided to scrap the step mash process and went right to a single infusion mash at 149deg. Zainasheff provides the reference but the recipe was tweaked too. We did our best to keep to the Father's Moustache format but gave the handlebar a little trim. The Cluster boiling hops are the same, but we substituted Saaz for the Styrian Goldings in the previous rendition. Saaz can't be all that bad can they? Pitched the finished wort onto the yeast from the Monday beer and it was gurgling gloriously when Steve stopped in to clean up on Sunday. Plans are to brew another batch on the 27th. Can't have enough of a lager for summer consumption.

 

 

Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager (Clone)- This beer is one of Al L's favorites, so he decided to brew 5 for the club meeting in May and 5 for himself. It's a Cooper's extract version from the "Clone Brews" book that was altered by doubling the Munton's chocolate and Briess black patent malts. And while Al was brewing this batch, Steve was outside on a wonderful February day brewing a 10 gal all-grain version. Steve transferred his beer to secondary on March 13th and this beers been placed in the lagering cellar at an undisclosed, very secret location. Flavor profile at transfer was phenomenal.  A side by side taste test against an actual Dixie Blackened Voodoo is planned. Al's beer will be the featured beer at the May North Chautauqua HomeBrewer's club meeting. It should be a good opportunity to do side by side by side taste tests with the commercial version and both the extract and all-grain versions. This recipe came out close enough that I'll spend time tweaking it to the original.

13 Pound Sticke- What happens when you take 13 lbs of malt at 78% extraction efficiency, add noble flavor hops and ferment on White Labs Dusseldorf Alt yeast? You get hit with a 13 lb Sticke. This beer resulted from research conducted while Steve was preparing to brew his Dusseldorf Alt. That beer mysteriously disappeared over a 2 week period at the store. Sticke means secret in Deutsch. That's because the beer was only brewed 2 times a year and was advertised as available only by a sign in the German bars that read "Sticke hier". Then it was gone. This beer will be bottled, not on tap. It's too good- if the taste at transfer is any indication. But if you are at the right place- at the right time- you never know. Maybe you'll see the "Sticke hier" sign. 

Kolsch- This is one of Steve's favorite beers. He keeps trying to get the recipe right. Okay, so he's made some bad ones, but he doesn't give up. Once you've tasted what Steve thinks was the perfect Kolsch, well, he just has to keep trying. This beer's recipe was taken from "Brewing Classic Styles" and altered just a bit to include 10% wheat malt. After brewing it was pitched onto a White Labs Kolsch yeast cake (see above) and allowed to ferment at a cool temp. (The back room floor was holding temps at about 53 degrees.) Beer was transferred the last week of January. It tasted great coming out of primary- Crisp, Citric, Fruity, Refreshing. Beer will be kegged before the end of the week of March 8th.

Me Love You Long Time Honey- A beer born on a Friday night conversation at the Dunkirk HomeBrew Shoppe. What better way to celebrate classic Vietnam War era movies than by stealing a line from "Full Metal Jacket" and crafting a beer around it. This is an example of taking an idea and running with it until.... Well the jury is still out on this beer. A lot of time and energy went into recipe formulation and label development. Not to mention all the used bottles that had to be de-labelled. It is brewed as an Oatmeal Cream Stout with lactose and honey. Somehow the interaction created a (just hold the groans and what else statements here) slightly sour beer. It does finish nicely and the flavor,not unpleasant, lasts "a long time." Cody Britton of Southpaw Signs took Steve's and Jim M's simple label design and created a work of art. I don't know if the beer is worthy of the label, but hey. You may want to take an antibiotic after drinking this one.

Braggot- Al L and Steve threw this together back in June '09 and finally bottled after Al's return from Down Under in January '10. This was a second attempt at Braggot. The initial batch was brewed in June of '08 from 12 lbs of honey and one 3.3 lb can of Cooper'sLight malt with a Cascade hop addition at 20 minutes left and pitched with Nottingham yeast. Story is they created a separate category for this cross between beer and mead "because it was so good." This version was altered. We substituted Cooper's Amber Malt and used Red Star Champagne yeast. The current version is much drier and obviously with a higher alcohol content. We shouldn't have played with apparent perfection though. I'll be making another batch soon using an all-grain version utilizing some Munich malt, but going back to the Nottingham yeast. There's not always some at the shoppe as it still needs some conditioning time.

Wee Heavy Scotch Ale- Steve resurrected a personal recipe from 1998 to brew this one. It was a "Best of Show" winner at the 1998 Chautauqua County Fair. The beer is thick and silky with a wonderful malt presence. The Alcohol content is evident. He bottled it back in October and brings some out now and again. The beer is kept in a secured cabinet with ultramodern high tech surveillance and alarms. He hopes there will be some left for Christmas. It's a hard beer to make all grain. The mash tun has difficulty handling 35 lbs of malt for 10 gallons. Steve only made 5 gallons this run. The recipe can be found at brewery.org under Cat's Meow recipe collection.

Your Father's Moustache- Cody B and Steve planned on brewing 10 gallons of this beer on March 13th. Steve and Cody got a yeast starter going on March 6th and Steve figured what better way to grow yeast than brew beer. So on March 8th, Steve pulled out the recipe books and started his step mash  version of Your Father's Moustache. It's a pre-prohibition lager that Jeff Renner resurrected from research he conducted. It was an 8 hour brew day, and that didn't include clean-up. So 5 gallons were created that Monday. Now that provided plenty of yeast for a 10 gallon batch of .....

Your Father's Moustache- Executive decisions had to be made. The store got busy early and Cody and Steve decided to scrap the step mash process and went right to a single infusion mash at 149deg. Zainasheff provides the reference but the recipe was tweaked too. We did our best to keep to the Father's Moustache format but gave the handlebar a little trim. The Cluster boiling hops are the same, but we substituted Saaz for the Styrian Goldings in the previous rendition. Saaz can't be all that bad can they? Pitched the finished wort onto the yeast from the Monday beer and it was gurgling gloriously when Steve stopped in to clean up on Sunday. Plans are to brew another batch on the 27th. Can't have enough of a lager for summer consumption.