











One day, along with 2 of my good friends, I decided to just start brewing beer. We started with an IPA kit and then on to a Smokey Porter. They were good, but just like with music, playing covers gets old over time. You want to create something. You want it to be your own. Someone else's recipe isn't as gratifying as YOUR recipe.





In the "Early Days" as I like to refer to it, we just had a stove top pot and were dealing with extracts instead of all-grain. Since then, we have made many upgrades and educated ourselves much more with the art of brewing. So this year I tweaked the recipe a bit to accommodate those changes. We started the day as we usually do, going out and buying way too much beer for the half day we would be brewing. Also, as with tradition we have to eat food that is not even remotely good for us.





Here is Ryan cutting the apples so that we can pasteurize them.









Once we were done with that, it was time to heat up the water for mashing in. If you'd like to read more about the process here is the link! Once it's heated to the correct temperature, it's time to mash in, or what some refer to as "doughing in".





Now we wait. Depending on the recipe, there can be many different times for this. We do a simple batch sparge. There are many other ways of doing this, but with the equipment we have, this will suffice. We get an efficiency of about 68-75%, which isn't bad. For this recipe, we'll wait about an hour until we can test for starch conversion . We tested, and everything was going as planned!





Next up, we transfer the now wort to the next cooler we have to calculate how many gallons we got. We were around 4 gallons and we needed about 7.









Next up is to lauder the wort and we do this with sparging. This way we can get more wort and get us up to the 7 gallons we want. We let that rest for about 10 minutes and then collect the wort again. Meanwhile... this is Ryan, again. This doesn't even portray how beautiful this smell is.









Now we're ready to start the boil where we add the rest of our ingredients. This recipe calls for a 60 minute boil, but you can go for any amount of time again depending on the recipe.









Once boiled, we need to cool the wort down to 68-72 degrees so that we can have a happy yeast. We have also recently included doing a longer cold break and whirlpooling to remove the excess trub









Now that everything has been cooled and the liquid and solids have separated a bit, it is time to transfer the wort to the primary fermentor. We need to create some aeration so that the yeast is again, a happy yeast. No one wants a pesky yeast. After this, we pitch the yeast!









Now we wait about a week for the yeast to convert the sugars to alcohol and we transfer to secondary fermentation for some more clarity. There is much argument over whether this step is necessary but for some reason, I like doing it. I have never encountered infection or any other problems from this.









We didn't run into many issues this brew day. However, the brew store did not give me the 11 pounds of grain I asked for. As I was brewing I could tell that there was definitely not enough grain in the mash tun. Oh well. This just means that the alcohol content will not be the 8.2% I wanted but more around the 5.5% range judging from the 1.055 OG reading we got from the hydrometer.





Normally people don't release their recipes to people, but I don't care. The slogan we use all the time with our "brewing company" we have is "Ourbeer is your beer" and I intend to keep it that way. So here it is! This is with the 8.2% alcohol version. If you wanna try for a lower ABV, just adjust the grains accordingly.





Original Gravity:

1.081 Final Gravity:

1.019 ABV (standard):

8.19% IBU (tinseth):

30.14 SRM (morey):

19.06 Fermentables Amount Fermentable PPG °L Bill % 11 lb American - Pale 2-Row 37 1.8 66.2% 2.5 lb American - Victory 34 28 15% 0.5 lb American - Caramel / Crystal 80L 33 80 3% 0.5 lb American - Carapils (Dextrine Malt) 33 1.8 3% 2.125 lb Maple Syrup 30 35 12.8% 16.63 lb Total Hops Amount Variety Type AA Use Time IBU 0.5 oz Calypso Pellet 13 Boil 60 min 22.12 1 oz Cluster Pellet 6.5 Boil 10 min 8.02 Mash Guidelines Amount Description Type Temp Time 5.4 gal Bring to 175 to warm mash tun Sparge 152 F 60 min 4 gal Bring to boil Sparge 172 F 10 min Starting Mash Thickness: 1.5 qt/lb Other Ingredients Amount Name Type Use Time 1 tsp Gypsum Water Agt Boil 60 min 1 each Whirlfloc Tablet Water Agt Boil 15 min 0.5 tsp Apple Pie Spice Spice Boil 10 min 4 each Cinnamon Spice Boil 10 min 2 each Vanilla Bean Spice Boil 10 min 1 tsp Vanilla Extract Spice Boil 10 min 5 each Apples Spice Primary 0 min Yeast Danstar - Nottingham Ale Yeast Attenuation (avg): 77% Flocculation: High Optimum Temp: 57 - 70 °F Starter: No Fermentation Temp: 72 °F Pitch Rate: 0.5 (M cells / ml / ° P)

185 B cells required Notes Pasteurize apples at low temperature until they turn into an apple sauce.

So this beer holds a very special place in my heart. It was the first beer that I formulated the recipe from scratch by researching how to extract flavors for hours upon hours. As I kept on reading, it seemed like an extremely hard task to get all of these complex flavors to come out properly. Spices in beer is an area that can easily become overpowering and destroy the delectable delicious flavor of beer; the combination of water, malt, hops, and yeast.