Cascadian Dark Ale Tasting/Experimental Hopback Results

I am getting low on this batch brewed back on 11/1/2012 as it is one of my favorites I have brewed to date. Friends and family have been hounding me lately to share another one, then another one, etc... The only thing keeping this beer from being a hop blasting westcoast style ipa is the soft edge of toasty notes from the chocolate and carafa malts. I am pleasantly surprised with how much hop aroma and flavor I was able to retain by racking the wort hot into an CO2 sparged glass jar filled with hops and sealed aitright and left to cool. The jar did a great job keeping the volatile hop aromas from boiling out of solution. Best drunk early on, this is one I may enter into a competition someday as I am so very pleased with it. This recipe will be my go to standby as a baseline for cascadian dark ale, the hops may change, but the malt gives just enough toast to hint at some nice malty echo heard in the darkness of this pint.

Forget Priming Bottles, Drink Your Homebrew Sooner With a Homemade Carbonator Cap

Homebrew bottle cap with schrader valve in it.

This post will show you how to carbonate individual bottles of mead, cider, soda or homebrew beer at any residual sugar level, any carbonation level and without having to wait three extra weeks to bottle conditioning with yeast. I am not a huge fan of dry mead or cider, but I do prefer to bottle my homebrewed cider with some residual sugar leftover, so how can I leave some sugar in but carbonate in the bottle without the yeast metabolizing all of my sugar? I had written a previous post about force carbonating without a keg, but this is alot less expensive than the $20 carbonator cap at my local homebrew shop. In the past I would have to backsweeten with a juice concentrate and let the yeast add carbonation in the sealed bottle. This post will show you how by adding a schrader valve you can skip the whole bottle priming process and go straight to forced carbonation any beverage of your choice.

5 Rules You Can't Ignore to Improve Homebrewed Beer

This post will explore the top 5 ways to improve your homebrew beer. As time goes by and my homebrews slowly improve I have tried to reflect on what I have changed in order to increase the quality of my homebrewed beer. As I have moved from extract brewing to all grain homebrewing I have noticed a benefit to brewing in certain ways that retain the quality of my beers over time, aswell as improving beer flavor too. These are my top 5 brewing changes for overall improvement: 

Cascadian Dark IPA 1.25 Gallon Extract Batch

Cascadian Dark IPA 1.25 Gallon Extract Batch

Cascadian dark ale prior to bottling.

For this session I brewed a cascadian dark ale, using the second version of a homemade diy hopback. You may have seen a few of my other diy hopback designs, but this one proves the simplest and least expensive. The jars I use as hopbacks are sold to wineries to determine the malic acid levels in wine before, during and after malolactic fermentation. They are known as gas chromatography jars, below is an image of one aswell as the recipe for this cascadian dark ipa:

Build A DIY Apple Cider Press Basket For Under $20

By: Orion

DIY apple cider press basket made from Home Depot bucket.

This post will give step by step instructions on how to make a durable DIY apple cider press basket without expensive materials such as oak or stainless steel. The best part of this project is that it can be used to press apples, grapes or any other fruit for homemade wine that you would like to extract juice from. Spring is here in Oregon and that means homemade apple cider! This project took me a little under one hour to complete including shopping for materials. I have had the joy of testing this basket out four times now and have had no problems with it!

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Clone Recipe (Partial Mash)

By: Orion Chandler

This post shows the recipe for a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone (partial mash). The recipe below is the product of five painstaking brew sessions just for this clone brew to get it right! A version of this came from the 2005 Brew Your Own magazine. In the original article it called for more malt. Each time I have attempted a perfect clone match it has gotten a little closer to the real thing, until this last time, it was spot on, enjoy!

Lagunitas IPA Clone Recipe (Extract Version)

By: Orion Chandler

Finally a tested clone recipe for Lagunitas IPA! Side by side I really can't tell the difference between the real thing and this recipe. This is my third tweak of this recipe and after a blind tasting could not tell the difference between the clone brew and the real thing, cheers!

DIY Homemade Fermentation Chamber From Picnic Cooler

By: Orion Chandler

Completed Fermentation Chamber.

This tutorial will show you how to make a homebrew fermentation chamber yourself out of a picnic cooler and other common parts. The great thing about this is that it lets people who live in small places like apartments ferment in places like closets and storage spaces without the use of an expensive refrigerator or chest freezer.

A fermentation chamber is essential in controlling the temperature that your homebrewed beer, cider, fruit wine of wine ferment at. For those of us fond of brewing German wheat ales, a steady and low temperature is desirable in avoiding off-flavors like banana and clove that the yeast produce when fermenting too hot. A chamber like this will give just enough heat o ferment perfectly within +/- 1 degree. The scope of this design is really meant for cool weather use, as it has no way to cool your homebrew down, it will only heat it up and keep it at a temperature that is equal to or warmer than ambient temperatures outside of the picnic cooler. This chamber is sized for a 5 gallon glass carboy. Here is a list of what you need to build it:

$30 Stainless Steel Hopback Design By Trigger

Post By: Orion Chandler

My original DIY Hopback for Under $20 article is just one possible way of many. I recently found a well written article detailing the construction of a hopback for under $30 using parts that are easily available. I thought I would give the folks from BrewGeeks a guest article for all of my readers. The design they show is very sleek and can be constructed to be airtight using soldered fittings and it boasts a nearly 100% stainless steel construction! The image above is a finished design of it. Please be sure to check out their original article for full construction details. Below is just a few of the many great pictures they have of the hopback in action!

Hops ready for steeping.

Hopback beneath brew kettle.

Leave a comment!

Force Carbonate Homebrew Without A Keg

By: Orion Chandler

How can I force carbonate my homebrewed beer without spending $35 on a keg? Spend $1 on a two-liter soda bottle instead, and $17 on a Carbonator Cap. There is a great video on Youtube for the construction of your own if you don't want to buy one here. The parts he recommends are food safe as the only part touching your beer will be chrome plated metal and a rubber seal. The image above is the force carbonation chart, the second image down is the Carbonator Cap.