Grodziskie redivivus, Polish mid-16th century Historic Beer and other Polish Beer and History

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Sources: people I’ve met on G+ Community and various Beer Brewing Communities and Web sites.

Piwo = Beer.

In Polish the letters X, V, Q don’t exist and some additional letters are also present that are missing from English.  For example VODKA is really spelled Wódka – the ó letter is more related to the U letter, because of how it is pronounced.

This article takes special meaning for me specifically since I am Polish, so am planning to invest extra time into figuring out all these recipes and how to best recreate them outside of Poland.  I will write about a few things and then later I will post my own recipes after of course trying it out and confirming their result – and not just blind posting.

The „Grodziskie redivivus” Project – this is a famous mid-16th century Polish beer Recipe project, its maintained by a polish brewing community and here is the English version.

http://www.pspd.org.pl/uploads/grodziskie/grodziskie-redivivus-raport-1-eng.pdf

In Europe the metric system is observed, so you will have to translate if needed to US units for weigh/liquids and pressures.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/why-us-not-on-metric-system.htm

It goes into great details about every step to first document how it used to be done and how over time brewing has changed; and how it is done today and why.  Some key differences to take note:

  • Artesian sources (especially the water)
  • low temp fermentation
  • a lot of older breweries and even ones that exist today open-ferment all their beers (this allows for a no stress/no pressure environment that brings out a unique and natural flower bouquet of flavors, tastes and is even apparent in the final color of the beer).
  • top and bottom fermenting yeasts are mixed together for a combination
  • Regional hops are used
  • some recipes use only single malt, like the smoked oak wheat malt and most breweries malt and smoke their own grains using their traditional methods
  • these beers are typically carbonated to 3.5 volume – so make sure to use strong bottles, don’t reuse any weak bottles that don’t qualify – the bottles might crack

Here is some links to some Polish brewing forums and Breweries:

 

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http://www.wiki.piwo.org – in Polish, but you can use Google translate

Here is a fairly good video (albeit a little long) – they dedicated their entire show to one of the polish beers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTpoJ2vL60g

Here is an active brewery that still employs a lot of the traditional ways of brewing beer, the videos are in Polish, but they do have an English version of their website:

http://www.browarfortuna.pl/en/open_fermentation/

 http://www.europeanbeerguide.net/polbrew.htm

a nice Wiki Page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Beer_and_breweries_in_Poland

a BBC article about the beer scene in Krakow – http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20121130-krakow-brews-a-beer-scene-of-its-own

If you would like to include something, leave a Comment, thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Irish Red Ale OR just an Celtic/Irish Ale – All Grain Recipe 5 Gallons

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5 gallon batch:

If you want a classic Irish Red, don’t use the Special B, replace with CaraRed 20. If your local brew store don’t carry CaraRed, look at a substitution chart for grains:

http://bsghandcraft.com/resources/malt_cross_reference_chart

Standard 60 minute mash (we use batch sparge).

OG – 1.058 – Brew Date: 04/12/2014
FG – 1.018 – Racking Date: 04/17/2014

ABV 5.25%

Golden Promise – 7 lb
Munich Malt – 3 lb
Special B – 8 oz – For Red Ale look (switch this to CaraRed 20 or use a substitute chart above)
Crystal 120 – 6 oz
Roasted Barley – 4 oz

Hops:

Once you achieve a rolling boil, set timer.

At 45 minuted add 1.5 ounce of Fuggle Hops
At 55 minutes add 1 ounce of East Kent Goldings & some Irish Moss

Yeast:

Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale Yeast – starter was prepared ahead of brew date.

65 ~ 68 F fermentation temperature.

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Golden Ale All Grain Recipe

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A quick and short post, recipe only.

Total volume of brew water used 8.5 gallons in this recipe, we used batch-sparge with 2 phases.

OG – 1.058 – Brew Date: 01/26/2014
FG – 1.014 – Racking Date: 02/01/2014

ABV 5.78%

This is for 5 gallons..

Cara Pils – 0.5 lb
Crystal 20 – 0.5 lb
Golden Promise – 7 lb
Munich Malt – 3 lb

Hops:

Once you achieve a rolling boil, set timer.

At 30 minuted add 1 ounce of Cascase Hops
At 45 minutes add 1 ounce of Willamette Hops
At 55 minutes add 1 ounce of Willamette Hops & some Irish Moss

At 65 minutes stop boil, reduce heat through cooling to a safe 70 ~ 75 F.

We used American Ale #1272 Wyeast.

Notes:

About the “Golden Malt” – An early-maturing spring barley, it is the Scottish equivalent of Maris Otter. Though brewers north of the English border claim that its sweet, clean flavor is superior to Maris Otter. Golden Promise malt has a depth of flavor that makes it the ideal base malt for both UK and USA-style IPAs. Golden Promise is also used extensively by premium whisky distilleries such as The Macallan.

This is a test pour out of the conditioning tank 3 weeks after racking, already looks nice and clear on its own.

golden_ale_test_pour_condition_week3

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How To Transfer beer between 2 Kegs

How To Transfer beer between 2 Kegs, video link below:

Tip: Using the Out for both Kegs, prevents beer foaming into the incoming keg as the beer fills in slowly from the bottom of the keg.

If you connect into the incoming Keg using the In – that will cause beer splashing and foaming inside the Keg.

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5 Tips to a New Home Brewer!

Tip #1 – It’s all about Kegs Man! (but don’t abandon bottling) to build-up your cellar reserves.  All brewers will quickly realize that it takes quite a bit of time to do a brew session (all day) and later even more planning needed to bottle, (cleaning, sanitizing, actual bottling time), space for all the bottles – so most people quickly switch to kegging their beer.  You can literally keg an entire 5 gallon batch in 5-10 minutes and be done with it.  But you also sooner or later realize that there are benefits to bottling, (you can give to friends, co-workers [check your local laws for giving out beer to people]), you can cellar beers for years like wine (not all beer styles apply) and create your very own private reserve label.

Buy bottles that can be cleaned and re-used, like the Grolsch-style swing-cap bottles, or just re-cap a regular beer of your choice.

Tip #2 – Don’t underestimate your brew batch size!  Most home brewers do 5 gallon batches and that is all fine and dandy, but soon your realize after all that hard work and time endured, that 5 gallons don’t last long especially when some friends come over for a party.

We usually here unless the batch is experimental, do by default 10 gallon batches, we split the 10 gallon into a 5 gallon Keg, 2.5 gallon Keg and the rest we bottle for friends and add to our aging cellar with a label imprinted and a date.

With each good confirmed batch, I bottle and put away a few bottles or maybe even a batch for long term storage.  I usually do this with higher gravity beers, because those keep well better over time like wine.  The higher alcohol percentage protects the beer from bacterial infection and overtime the chemicals interactions change the beer for the better.

Tip #3 – Age most beer styles correctly before giving it out for consumption!

Some Belgian styles need to age for 6 to 12 months! Some beers are good after about 2 months!  I did tests by opening a beer bottle at 1 month, 2 and 3 and trust me the 3 month old bottle was substantially better than the 1 month old bottle.

Even if you use the best, award-winning recipe that was repeatedly brewed for 1,000 years! – If you don’t wait and age it correctly before giving it out, people will think sub-par thoughts about your beer and your brewing skills.  Make sure to say when the beer is under-aged if you must give it out, so that people are aware.

Tip: Some aging time can be cut by filtering the beer, but there are pros and cons.

Yes there are some beers that don’t age well for longer periods of time, usually these are beers that use a lot of hops, like IPAs.  Use brown Bottles and try to cellar where temperatures are stable and there is no to little light.  Light overtime will give beer a skunky smell, so unless you brewed a hemp beer, you probably don’t want any skunk in it.

Tip #4 – Not everyone wants to join a brew club for a variety of reasons, maybe you are not that social of a person or don’t want to deal with the politics at brew clubs, fees, etc… etc.. etc.  There is plenty of good brew forums, blogs and communities for beer discussion (Google+ has many great beer communities and they are all free, just join), and watch your skills get better much faster and sooner than if you brewed alone for the next 20 years, trust me – communities have a lot of experienced brewers of all kinds that will quickly answer your questions, and point you in the right direction – saving you lots of time and money $.

Tip #5 – if you have a friend who brews, don’t be shy and ask them for help, they probably already have developed relationships with other brewers and you could get a hookup and deals on used equipment or new equipment and overall a lot of helpful tips!

Whatever you end up doing, please take extra time to think things through, SAFETY is #1.

Happy Holidays 2014!

 

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Brown Ale – All Grain Recipe

2015 brew: this year we brewed it again but we decided to split the batch in half and treat one with American Oak chips.  The beer came out fantastic with a smooth velvet clean taste, the oak came through slightly in the background – only in secondary for 3 weeks as we didn’t want an overwhelming oak profile.

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If you want a lighter Brown color, ease back on the chocolate malt.

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we also did a version treated with American Oak chips – it turn the beer velvet smooth and delicious.

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Our Recipe is based on Ellie’s Brown Ale…  We post it as is for now and then update it later with our tweaks.

Credit Link – http://averybrewing.com/brewery/recipes-for-homebrewers/

( they have others posted as well and were kind enough to share them with the public, beautiful! )

Anytime we try a new recipe that we have never brewed before, we try to look-up and use some award-winning recipe first, so that the effort is not wasted and we end up with good beer and we will consider tweaking it here and there or changing things up and down.

Also keep in mind that your local brew supply store might not have the exact grains called for in a recipe, so just adjust to the closest grain available that they have, if not sure, just ask for help, usually brew stores have knowledgeable staff.

Also, ask your self what you like in whatever style of beer you want to brew, in a Brown Ale, do you like it a darker tone of brown for the color, spices or no spices ?

OG – 1.054 – Brew Date: 01/12/2014
FG – 1.014 – Racking Date: 01/19/2014

ABV 5.25%

Hops in this recipe are rated using AAU’s, it stands for (Alpha Acid Unit), the math is to divide whatever AAU you need by the acid level printed on the label of your hops (per 1 ounce).  For example: Norther Brewer 8.6%.  So 7 AAU’s of Norther Brewer is 7 / 8.6 = 0.81 ounces of Northern Brewer (so you will need a scale), you should be fine if you round-off, but then you lose exactness of the formula, you can easily transfer the formula into Excel or some other open-source software and keep track of it there or your favorite brewing software.

Start with a base weight of say 10/11 LB for each 5 gallons or use your brewing software to tune it in more exact, [if you are ODD or just like details] and then divide/multiply the weight by the percentage needed (use basic math).

Example of a quick Excel sheet to compute totals:

quick_excel_sheet

Grains:

Pale 2-Row – 80.5%
Munich – 6.4%
C-120 – 4.2%
Honey Malt – 2.3%
Chocolate – 6.6%

Hops:

60 min – Bullion (7.6% AA) – 0.13oz
30 min – Sterling (5.1% AA) – 0.32oz
0 min – Sterling (5.1% AA) – 1.01 oz

Use your house strain for yeast, original recipe used California, but we plan to use English.

Fermentation temp – 68F (from our experience if you are not spot on, you will still get good beer, as long as you stay within an acceptable temperature range).

Happy brewing!

 

 

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Kodiak’s British ESB Pumpkin Porter

2014 Rapsberry Porter Version below (the beer was only 3 weeks old, looked great and tasted great!)

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2013 Pumpkin Porter Version below:

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A 5 gallon batch recipe for a nice Pumpkin Porter, based on the recipe of a Edmund Fitzgerald porter clone with our tweaks.  We wanted to give it a British theme, so that’s the pale malt we used, but any pale malt suitable for use in porters or stouts should work well.

In addition we are providing you a link to a very good article on the subject of porters in general, a recommended read – by Brew Magazine:

http://byo.com/porter/item/1260-practical-porter

Grain:

  • 8 lb Pale Malt – we used (British pale malt)
  • 3/4 lb Crystal 60 L Malt
  • 1/2 lb Chocolate Malt
  • 3/4 lb Roasted barley Malt

Hops:

Hops are rated using AAU’s in this recipe, it stands for Alpha Acid Unit, the math is to divide whatever AAU you need by the acid level printed on the label of your hops (per 1 ounce).  For example our hops were: Norther Brewer 8.6%, Cascade 6.7% and Fuggle at 5.3%.  So 7 AAU’s of Norther Brewer is 7 / 8.6 = 0.81 ounces of Northern Brewer (so you will need a scale), you should be fine if you round-off, but then you loose exactness of the formula.

  • 7 AAU’s or 0.81 ounce /  Northern Brewer @ 0 minutes (from start of boil)
  • 4 AAU’s or 0.75 ounce /  Fuggles @ 30 minutes
  • 8 AAU’s or 1.19 oz / Cascade @ 60 minutes

Pumpkin:

Add in at last 10 minutes of rolling boil, if you want more pumpkin flavor try adding at last 5 minutes or at end of boil.

A good chunk of either fresh or frozen organic sugar pumpkin is the best, you can substitute for canned pumpkin that you can buy in the store, but………  If you have a little property, try growing some sugar pumpkins, those are the best – or buy them from your local farm and prepare your own pumpkin meat.

In our recipe we used a 2.2 lb chunk of a earlier prepared frozen pumpkin meat!  Article on how to do that here: https://kodiakbrewing.com/wordpress/?p=1364

Spices:

What about the spices that typically go along into a regular pumpkin ale ?  We didn’t use it in our recipe, but you are more than welcome to try if you want :- )

Mash:

We did the standard mash at 152 F for 60 minutes using the batch sparge method.

video of mashing phase:

video of mash out:

Yeast:

We used – WYEAST London ESB #1968, use your house strain if it is suitable for a Porter.

Fermentation:

A recommended temperature is about 65 F – but there exists various different techniques, so do some research if you want to know more.

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Preparing your own pumpkin for beer brew day

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Each pumpkin will give you lots and lots of seeds, more than you will ever need.

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Pumpkin Ale – is a special type of beer, highly in demand, for the good stuff!

The best fastest way is to buy canned pumpkin and then use that in the beer recipe to brew your beer to learn, but if you want to do it the right way, the proper way is to use fresh pumpkin and then baking it to get the pumpkin meat prepared for the brewing session.

Nothing beats a fresh 100% organic pumpkin grown in your back yard and it is fairly easy to do as well!

There are many web sites that will give you a good idea of how to prepare the pumpkin and then how to bake it in the oven, here are the steps:

  1. clean the pumpkin well with warm water
  2. cut the pumpkin in half and remove all the seeds in the middle with a sharp good knife
  3. save the seeds for next year, each pumpkin will give you many of seeds
  4. add some water into a bake dish 1/4 ” and place pumpkin there, cut face down
  5. bake in oven at 350 F for about 40 – 45 minutes until soft, like a potato (poke check)
  6. remove and let cool down
  7. peel the outer skin, cut into chunks, place into plastic bags (suck out oxygen) and freeze

some more pictures (after baking is over):

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pumpkin_bag

Let the bag cool before putting into freezer!

Cheers!

 

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Beer Hops growing from start to finish, with pictures…

This short post shows with lots of pictures the progression of growing a hop plant, harvesting hops and drying them out.

Remember!!! – Hops are deadly to Dogs, so keep them away from your pets at all times, through all phases of dealing with them once you pick them off the plants, and even while on plants, isolate them with some fencing, just to be on the safe side.

Also, you probably won’t get much if any hops the first year after planting from root, the first year is all about the plant establishing it self (this is normal).  If you plant a hop plant from a plant (not a root) early enough in the season, you might get some hops the first year.

Hops peaking out from a fresh root.

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Hops growing up and climbing the trellis (made from cow fencing) on it’s side.

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Hop plants climbing the top of the trellis and transitioning to a grow rope.

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Hops are starting to flower, buds are visible.

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Buds are almost mature and ready for Harvest.

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Dried hops after harvest.

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Bottom of the dry box, loose yellow lupulin clearly visible.

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For more information on Hops see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops

Also, this is a really good resource with lots of details and identifying pictures to help you id which hops you might have, if you don’t know:

http://www.usahops.org/userfiles/file/HGA%20BCI%20Reports/HGA%20Variety%20Manual%20-%20English%20%28updated%20March%202011%29.pdf

Thanks for reading and Cheers!

 

 

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Howto convert a beer keg into a Fermentor, 15.5 gallons

If you have an extra standard beer keg, with a little effort, you can turn it into a 15.5 gallon stainless steel fermentor.  In this video I show you how I did it.  Benefits are the adoption of something existing that you have with little extra cost, versus buying expensive kits that sell for a few hundreds of dollars $$$

Not to say that there is anything wrong with them, they are in fact very nice kits, you just end up saving some money.

The beer won’t know any different, it will come out the same…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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