I recently made the Stout BBQ Sauce from the Homebrew Chef‘s website, and decided to make enough to be able to can some for later use, or give away. My wife has been getting into canning / preserving this summer, so I had her help me through the process. I really didn’t realize how easy it was, and will definitely be doing more of this. Since I use beer in most things I make, I’ll try to keep up on blogging them.

Anyway, the whole thing was pretty easy – just get your sauce cooked, and keep it warm so the cans don’t get shocked later when they go into boiling water…

Then, fill up your pre-cleaned cans, using a wide funnel – think about what size you’ll want to eat/ use later (sanitized is good, but not necessary)

Next, have your assistant be careful while putting the lidded cans into enough already boiling water to cover completely

Then, let those cans sit in the boiling water for 30 minutes – this amount of time is specific to a sauce this acidic – less acidic sauces may take longer to kill any potential bugs inside and seal.

Then, remove and just let cool completely before moving. They should seal themselves during the cooling process.

And that’s it! Just like homebrewing, it’s a great way to make something fun and save it for later, maybe even share with friends

It was definitely time for some maintenance. Everything I’ve read has said that for a healthy harvest, only 2 – 3 authorized shoots should be allowed to grow, so that the plant can concentrate it’s energy on keeping those vines healthy. Also, the latest issue of BYO had a trick I hadn’t seen before, but sounded good – hops like to keep growing vertically, so if they get taller than the vertical space available, you should be able to add more twine, and just let the grown vine droop, even allowing it to coil at the base. The article was concentrating on growing hops in pots (more on that later), but as I don’t have any more space vertically, and I can’t really put anything up that would allow it to be that tall, but grow horizontally (along the top of the ‘fence’), I thought I’d give it a try. The idea I got from the article was that eventually, even the coiled vine would produce cones, so you’d get a bigger harvest and healthier plants by allowing them to keep growing vertically.
So, I trimmed the unauthorized shoots -

And added more twine to allow for more vertical growth -

I hope I did everything correctly, but I’m a bit nervous – the healthy vine is now right on the ground,

I’m afraid I just made it easy access to bugs. With the trimming of the ground vines, I’m also eliminating some potential production space, as well as totally committing to those ‘authorized’ vines – now, if I mess up on those, I don’t have any backups. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

Recipe for 5 gallons

Grain Bill:
3 lbs British Pale
1lb British Munich
1lb American Crystal 20L
1lb Flaked Rye
2oz Flaked Wheat

Sugars
4lbs Light Dry Malt Extract
3.3lbs Amber Liquid Malt Extract
6oz Honey
8oz Malt Dextrine

Hops
2oz Columbus 14.2% @ 60 min
1oz Target 10% @ 45 min
1oz Tettnanger x% @ 0 min

Yeast
WLP001 – California Ale

Method
Mill all grains EXCEPT the flaked Rye and Wheat. Place all grains together in 2 gallons of 160 F deg water for 30 min, then rinse with warm water. Add as much additional water as pot allows, dissolve Malt Dextrine, DLME, and AME in the water, add Columbus hops, and bring to a boil. Add honey at the 30 minute mark, and follow the hop schedule. Cool and pitch yeast at 70 degrees.

Substitutions
I just used the pre-set 7lb bucket of liquid amber malt extract available at my local shop for the barley sugars, and prices for the domestic versions of each of those specialty grains are lower, so I subbed out ‘Merican- grown grains, mostly the same style, or as close as sounded right at the time. I guess I could have kept track better, but it was pretty close. I had to use Zeus hops at 16.4% instead of the unavailable Columbus. I used the whole 2oz bag, but some of it looked pretty brown/ stale, so maybe it evened out. I also had to replace the Target hops, which were not in the freezer at the store. I don’t remember what I used, and the receipt cut off the description, but there’s a half bag of Willamette in our freezer that looks new, so I’ll go with that. Whatever the chart said at the store to sub out – Look dude, it was Saturday and I hadn’t really had my morning coffee yet, and I didn’t think about paying attention on Sunday. Anyway, that was most of it – I didn’t test OG, but the recipe says it should be about 1.078, finishing around 1.018. My beers have been finishing pretty heavy lately – I think it’s mostly the lack of temperature control (among other non- healthy yeast practices) – but I hope this gets close to the stated FG, it’s really not all that low. If I’m good, I’ll rack to a secondary and dry-hop with the half bag of Willamette in a week. We’ll see.

But in reality, a lack of things to do is hard to come by nowadays and we have been rather busy. A few items of note:

1. We did not go to the Los Angeles Beer Festival due to the fact it was $40 for something only THREE HOURS LONG! So instead, we brewed an experimental batch which brings me to…
2. Recipated up an Hopped Irish Red Ale and tried some new things in our brew process. More on that in another post along with the recipe.
3. We have been working on collecting our brewing information and resources and aggregating it all in an easily accessible online location which will allow for community contributions and corrections. With that said, we haven’t committed to a launch date but I can say it will be “soon”.

That’s about it.

Looking forward to Beer Wars on the 16th of this month.

Sunshine Honey Pale Ale

5 gallons

Brewed:Feb. 27,  2009

Malt Extract / Fermentables:

Pale LME:  6 lbs.

Clover Honey: 2 lbs 8 oz

Grain Bill:

American Crystal 40L:  1 lb

Hopping Schedule:

#1  Columbus (Tomahawk) [16.4 %] (1 oz @ 60 min)

#2  Amarillo (1 oz @ 15 min)

#3  Casscade (1 oz @ 0 min)

Starting Gravity: 1.061

Fermentation Temperature: 65°-75°F

Yeast: White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Steep grains at 150°F for 20-30 mins. to create a “tea”.  Bring 2-3 gallons of water to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in malt extract, honey, and grain “tea”. Bring to a boil. When foaming stops add hops per schedule. Chill and add water as need to bring to 5 gallons at 75°F and pitch yeast. Ferment at 65°-75°F for 10-14 days. Bottle condition for 7 days. Enjoy.

Also, a small announcement here, we have also set ourselves up with Flickr and Twitter accounts! With that said, be sure and follow us on Twitter for easy post updates. Also check out all of our photos over at Flickr.

Malt Extract:

Pale  6 lbs.

Munich 3 lbs.

Grain Bill:

Roasted Barley 4 oz

Crystal 120 4 oz

Special B 4 oz

Crystal 10 4 oz

Peated malt 1 oz

Hopping Schedule:

#1 Northern Brewer (7.4%)     1.2 oz 60 min

#2 Willamette (4.5 %)                 0.5 oz 30 min

Starting Gravity: 1.067

Fermentation Temperature: 60-70 degrees F

Yeast: White Labs WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

Instructions:

1. In a small pot bring 3 or 4 quarts of water to around 150 degrees.
2. Add specialty grains to straining bag and steep for 20-30 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, fill the large brew pot half full with water and apply heat.
4. When bubbles start to rise from the large brew pot, turn off the heat and stir in extract.
5. Remove grain bag from small brew pot and pour a glass or two of warm water over the grain bag into the small brew pot.
6. Add your “tea” to the large brew pot.
7. Bring your wort to a full, rolling boil. Watch for boilovers.
8. Once the foaming stops, add the contents of the first hop package.
9. Sanitize your fermenter, strainer, airlock and stopper.
10. Maintain the boil for one hour, taking adding hops per recipe.
11. When the boil is done, cool the pot and wort as quickly as possible until pot is cool to the touch.
12. Pour the wort into your sanitized fermenter, add pre-chilled water to bring level up to 5 gallons at about 75 degrees.
13. Pitch the yeast.
14. Ferment in the temperature range above until visible signs of fermentation have ceased.
15. Prime and bottle, then store in dark cool place for minimum of 10 days.
16. Enjoy!

Note:  Recipe courtesy of Culver City Brew Supply