Preliminary 'Rachel' Recipe

I am fascinated by beer. I just finished my seventh book either on homebrewing and/or commerial beer production, and I've already nearly exhausted the Traverse Area District Library's literary resources on the subject.

And so I've stepped it up. With the wealth of knowledge I've acquired at this point I feel, even having never brewed a beer before, that with the help of The Beer Recipator, a fabulous online tool that assists brewers by calculating everything from hop bitterness to the anticipated color of your brew, I have created a satisfactory recipe, or at least preliminary idea, for Dierksenkougan's first beer.

I realize the following is incredibly technical, but these charts are commonplace in the brewing world. I'll do my best to follow up each detail with a clear description, definition, or subscript. These terms and numbers are really rather simple, and absolutely essential in appreciating and understanding craft beer (that is, non-Budweiser/Miller/Coors beers that pay more respect to classic and variant European styles of beer).

Dierksenkougan Rachel
American Amber Ale
Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5 Gallons
Color: 12 SRM
Bitterness: 33 IBU
Original Gravity: 1.050. Final Gravity: 1.010. Alcohol Content: 5.1% by volume.
Grain: 7.5 lb. Pale American 6-row, 1.5 lb. American Crystal 60 Lovibond, .5 lb. Flaked Wheat
Yeast: Wyeast #1332 Northwest Ale Yeast
Bittering Hops (60 minutes): 1 oz. Cascade
Flavoring Hops (15 minutes): .5 oz. Willamette
Aromatic Hops (5 minutes): .5 oz. Willamette
Carbonation: Moderate (24 units), add 4.0 oz. of corn sugar before bottling at 65 degrees

For clarification:
- Type specifies whether the brewer will be using malt extract (type: extract) which generally comes as a premade syrup in a can, or will be brewing straight from malted grain, extracting the sugars themselves (type: all grain). There is also a partial mash type, which is part extract and part grain brewing.
- SRM stands for "Standard Refrence Method," which measures the absorbance of light into a certain colored brew. What that means for you and me is that lower numbers represent lighter beers (in color, not calorie content) and so forth. An SRM of 12 is a deep red color, slightly browner than the red on Rachel's label, an appropriate hue for what have seemed to become DK's team colors.
- Bitterness is measured in IBUs, or international bitterness units, determined primarily by how many "alpha acids" are released by the hops. Alpha acids, plus a few minor beta acids, are the source of bitterness in the plant. 33 IBUs of bittnerness are slightly above average for this style of beer, but by no means too strong. I mean to replicate the stronger hop characters of Bell's Amber Ale and other amber ales I have tasted. I believe it lends more balance to the full malt palette of the typical Amber Ale.
- Gravity is a measurement of density. Original gravity is the beer's density before fermentation, while final gravity is the density upon bottling. The drop in this density occurs because the heavy sugars in the brew are converted by the yeast into carbon dioxide and ethanol (alcohol), which are less dense. Brewers use this decline in density to measure an approximate alcohol content, which is fairly high in this case. Frankly, I like my beers strong. More than likely, the content will not overwhelm the flavor by any means, since it is still well within the expected ABV content for this style of beer.
- There is little to say about the grains in this brew. Like most beers, we begin with large amounts of pale malt, adding color here with a medium color (Lovibond is another similar color scale) crystal malt (which, despite the name, is not crystal clear, but rather carmel in color). The dash of wheat flake will promote a rounder body and a full, natural head on the beer without the use of artificial head-retention agents.
- Wyeast, the foremost supplier of brewing yeast in the country, produces several pure yest strains that each have unique characteristics in flocculation (clarity), ester production (natural off-flavors, not always a bad thing), and other accentuations. #1332, the Northwest Ale Yeast, is "one of the classic ale strains from the Northwest U.S. Breweries. Produces a malty and mildly fruity ale with good depth and complexity. Flocculation - high." It is also perfect for room temperature (65 to 75 degrees) fermentation.
- Bittering hops are added early in the boil for their namesake reason. Flavoring hops are added later, so that their unique flavors are not boiled out, yet their bitterness is not heated long enough to strongly affect the brew's IBUs. Aromatic hops are added very late, and contribute very little to flavor, though their oils are absorbed into the beer, enhancing its nose.
- Rachel is moderately carbonated. These nameless "units" of carbonation are new to me, an invention I presume of the recipator to establish the amount of priming sugar required to achieve proper carbonation in bottle conditioned beers like Dierksenkougan's.

There she is, and I'm very happy with her. With any luck, this recipe will yield a decent outcome without much need for tweaking. That's why I've been doing my research. Let me know what you think of it, and if you can, try an Amber Ale this summer to get an idea of what's going to be brewing. I suggest it with a good, medium-rare hamburger, and coincidentally, so do the experts.

Only a few more months...

The Brewmaster

Rachel (Update I)

I spent some serious time today thinking about which beer I want to brew first as the pioneer brew and flagship beverage of Dierksenkougan Microbrew. I think I've made a decision.



I'd like to make my first batch an Amber Ale, one that I'm naming after my good friend Rachel Klegman, for several reasons:

1. Ambers go well with grilled red meat and BBQ, on which I expect the apartment will be basing its diet.
2. It is undoubtedly my personal favorite style of beer I've experienced so far.
3. It should be rather simple to brew, yet responsive toward making it unique and complex.
4. Malty and not heavily hopped, it should appeal to a wider range of beer drinkers.

I plan to begin working on a recipe soon, and I will be sure to post it when I finish and explain the contents and my reasoning in laymen's terms. I visited Bell's General Store during my visit to Kalamazoo this week, and I think I will do my initial business with them come September. Their prices are even more affordable than Things Beer, though they may have a slightly less comprehensive selection. But, for now, they seem to have what I need to start at an intermediate level, and a wide selection of grains and ingredients.

That is all. I hope everyone is still having a decent summer. I know I can't wait to get out of here.

Sam