The Grandfather Series - Session 1 - Grandpa Giles

A little over a year ago I had a pretty ruff time. I lost both of my grandfathers in about a 5 month period. I thought about how I can honor them and their life. While I'm still thinking about another way which I want to keep quiet until I actually do it (if I do), I plan on honoring them in a bit of a different way. I present the Grandfather Series. While neither of my grandfathers were big on beer (or at least not that I remember), they were both farmers in Montana. In creating these recipes, I thought about the items which they grew. In no particular order, here's my first shot at it with back story....

My Grandpa Giles (Mom's Dad) was a farmer in north central Montana, often known as the "Golden Triangle" due to the large amount of wheat which is produced there. My grandfather also had a love of honey. So much so that he would allow local beekeepers to put bee hives on his land. It was only natural for me to create a Honey Wheat to honor him. Now I do still have family in that area which do grown wheat. I didn't use family wheat due to the process which is required to make it into a brew-able product (Sorry Karen!). So with that, I did the next best thing I could which is buy wheat from the Golden Triangle which is processed for brewing. Who knows, maybe it did come from the family farm. As for honey, I hit up the Minneapolis farmers market where I bought 1.5 lbs of honey from a local bee keeper. I wanted to use unprocessed crystal honey, but for first run cost reasons I used the liquid melted stuff. This was my 2nd time using honey, but it has been many years. My very first kit brew was a honey wheat which if I remember correctly tasted horrible. Here's a breakdown of the recipe:




Ingredients

Amt	Name
6 lbs	Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
4 lbs	Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (2.0 SRM)
4.0 oz	Carawheat (Weyermann) (50.0 SRM)
1 lbs	Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
1.00 oz	Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
1.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 2.0 min
1.0 pkg	American Wheat Ale (Wyeast Labs #1010) [125.00 ml] w/ 1200ml Starter
1 lbs 8.0 oz	Honey (1.0 SRM)

Mash @ 152f for 60min (Just a bit higher then I wanted, 150 would have been better)
Batch Sparge at 170f
OG: 1.054 (Lower then I wanted)

My grandfather was a bit of a wild man in his younger days, per my mom's stories. I think he was watching me while I was brewing this beer. I keg my beer which limits the final amount of beer I can brew at 5 gallons. Yes I could bottle some and keg some, but I really hate bottling. No, seriously, I hate it. Now I'm using a new brew pot which I was pre-warned from my buddy who I bought it from that it tends to evaporate a bit faster then others. It's a 10 gal pot which I went from a 7.5 gal (now used as my hot water tun, sorry it's not for sale!). So with that known, I ran a little higher on the liquid side assuming greater evaporation. When I put the beer in my 6.5 gal fermentor, it measured a little over my 5.5 gal marking. I'm guessing around 5.7 gals. Now that doesn't give me much head space for the yeast, then add the 1200ml yeast starter I had running for 3 days it makes even less. I was really worried this beer was going to be a handful for me, but I had no clue exactly what I was getting into. Remember, honey is a sugar, which is food for yeast.

I put the beer in the fermentor on Sunday 2pm, by 8:30pm I had heavy action in the airlock. Uh oh. This morning (Monday) at 6:30am I woke up to this:

Shit. This is what's called a blow-off. I've never had this problem before. So much so that my dumbass gave away my blowoff tube which is given in most starter brew kits. It's a large tube that goes where that airlock would be. Being that it was early and I needed to get ready for work, I put tin foil over the top of the air lock to keep crap from falling into the airlock and possibly into the beer, added additional towels around the fermentor and went to work. I never thought about adding smaller tubing which I have into the airlock to contain some of this. 

5pm Monday:

Tin foiled helped a whooole lot :p You can see it on the right side. Black thing in the back is my stir plate. Seems like my grandfathers wild ways continues with this beer. The action in the airlock has gone down enough that I was able to add more liquid (Actually used Jack Daniels in the airlock). It's still bubbling away.

Ryan and Grandpa Giles:

My next brew will be honoring my Grandpa Joe (Dad's Dad). Grandpa Joe used to grow 2-row barley for Coors. I'll also be including another interesting item (assuming I can find it). It most likely won't be until after the 4th of July, but stay tuned. I'll also have an entry here soon about my hop growing (or lack there of).

Prost!

-Ryan