Double Brew Wknd

So on Saturday I got a little ambitious. I brewed two homebrew batches in one afternoon/evening. The first was a rhubarb beer experiment... I had to create a simple beer to make a rhubarb/something blend beer from. This is what I came up with, a simple wheat beer, expressed here in non-volume specific rates:

Mash at 50 C for 20 minutes, raise to 68 C for 50 minutes. 3.0 L/kg grain dough-in water. Mashout high at 79-80 C. Target OG=13.2 Plato.
55.6% 2-row pale malt
41.4% Malted wheat
2.6% Carared malt
0.38% Black malt (to add a red hue)

Hopped with 8.125 AAU/L Cascade hops for bittering, all of boil (60 min)
Plus 4.063 AAU/L Cascade hops for aroma, last 2 minutes of boil.

Yeast: Some clean ale yeast, like London or American ale. Ferment 18-20 C.
The brew when pretty except for a little higher than expected boil-off rate. I had to top up with a little boiled water to bring the pre-ferment gravity down to a reasonable level.

When the fermentation is done the batch will be split and racked into 2 carboys with different rhubarb mixtures. Some ideas that have been tossed around are rhubarb-saskatoon berry, rhubarb-raspberry, and rhubarb-strawberry.

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Next was the third installment of my "Super Amber Brown Ale" series. I think this third try should work out quite well, the mash and boil smelt AMAZING. The malt bill is more complex than I would usually do:

Mash at 66 C for 60 minutes. Dough in with 3.0 L/kg grain. Mashout at 77 C. Targer OG 15.6 Plato.
64.8% 2-row pale malt
18.5% Dark munich malt, 10L
9.25% C120 malt (Crystal ~120L)
3.70% Cararoma malt (adds malty aroma, similar to crystal malt)
2.96% UK Chocolate malt
0.37% Roast barley
0.37% Black Patent malt

Boiled for 1.5 hrs. Hopped with:
First Gold @ 9.57 AAU/L boiled for 75 min.
First Gold @ 5.98 AAU/L boiled for 10 min.
Pretty much any British Ale style yeast should do.

This batch was ok, although after my mash I left a valve open by accident and lost about half a L of pure extract. As such, my final gravity was 1 Plato short of what I wanted, although my volume was fine. I guess I could have had higher gravity with less volume but... meh. I'm looking for the flavour in this beer for the most part.

Cheers



NOTE: AAU/L = Alpha Acid Units of hops per L of final wort volume after boil. To get the weight of hops in g, calculate (AAU/L * L of final wort) / (AA% of hops)