Blogs
| Tripple Dopple Amber Tackle Bock |
| Written by Hunter Cobbs |
| Friday, 10 April 2009 14:22 |
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Well I must say, I'm very impressed with this concotion of mine. Just to give you a quick run-down. This is a no-nonsense all-malt heavy gravity beer with apporx 12%abv. The head retention is the best I've had to date. After taking a few sips, and letting it sit for 10 minutes, I've still got a health 1/2inch of head on the beer. It's adhearing to the glass nicely and I'd say that this will even outlast a Guinness on head retention.
So, How did I make such a brew? I did it all with good-old fashioned time and Mr. Beer. Ingredient list: Equipment List:
Misc. Items:
0 - Activating Yeast This can be the most fun(and frustrating) part of the recipie. It all depends on how long you've left your yeast in the fridge. The longer you've left it... the longer this step will take (first time I did it, it took three days for the yeast to activate)
1 - Sanitation Steps Most of the time you get decent enough results out of the One-Step that comes from Mr. Beer, but I never liked the residue that can be left over. And, frankly... after a failed batch, I didn't trust it enough for this recipie that requires at least a month of fermentation. So, I turned to Iodophor. Its simple enough to use and it even has a nice tell-tale color (light amber color to the water) to let you tell that you've got the right concentrations. But, the cool thing is that coupled with a Mr. Beer keg, its almost impossible to mess up.
By this time all your equipment will be sanitized. 2 - Wort Creation This is what I call the Mac-n-Cheese step to Mr. Beer. Generally, this is one of the most labor intensive parts of creating beer. And it still is for the Mr. Beer. However, you can do this step in under 15 minutes after a few practices.
3 - Wort Pour, Pitching Yeast, Fermentation, and Bottling This is when you get ready to make some real beer.
Now, if you are following the standard Mr. Beer Brew processes, you probably noticed I didn't include a whisk, but instead included a toothpick and olive oil. This is a neat trick I picked up from other forums that was originally developed by a Belgium brewery. The basics of it is this: Yeast need oxygen to generate fatty acids on their outer cell wall to help them survive longer. However, oxygen also increases the rate that a beer will go stale. Well, it turns out that olive oil has the proper fatty acids in it that the yeast needs. So, why go through the trouble of aerating the wort when you can simply add a SMALL amount of olive oil and the yeast will be just happy as they can be. Ok science lesson over, back to the beer.
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