BREWDAY: When life drops your butternut, make BUTTERNUT ALE!

Upon the kitchen table that is a family heirloom from when my parents were first married, I had placed two pie pumpkins, and a butternut squash.

I had every intention of making a pumpkin beer in a couple weeks, after pipelining some simple, small SMaSH Pale Ales to feature Cluster and Styrian Celeja hops in two otherwise identical brews. I had even toasted up 8 ounces of malt to a nice, nutty, medium toast, to be divided up between the two pale ales. I had even made up 8 ounces of a home-roasted caramel malt, made from soaking grain and caramelizing it in the oven and then roasting it to dry it out. I had done these things for Pale Ales.

The gods of homebrew hurled my butternut squash upon the ground. It cracked at the top, splitting evenly down the center, and halfway down the fruit.

Immediately, I roasted the squash to make some use out of it. If I had left it alone, it would have just rotted like that.

So... That was not part of our dinner plans, just yet.

Beer gods demanded Butternut Squash Beer.

Interesting fact: Most homebrewers who make pumpkin beer are probably already making butternut squash beer, because most commercial cans of pumpkin puree are actually a type of butternut squash, or a hybrid variety of squash/pumpkin called Dickenson Field Squash. Actual pumpkin, if you made it into a pie, would be a golden yellow color, not the orange we know and assume means pumpkin. Butternut Squash is what people are really thinking about, when they're imagining the flavor of pumpkin in their mind. It's richer, deeper, with a bright orange color, and it's a perfect thing to make beer with on an early autumn day!

I cobbled together a recipe with what I had lying around. Fortunately, I did have some more interesting malts in the brewcloset. (Plus some fresh spices straight from Grenada courtesy of my wife, whose family harvest cocoa, cinnamon, and amazing nutmeg and send it to us from their farm. Nutmeg and cinnamon were both from Grenada!)

This batch turned into a 3 gallon brew when I lost track of how much water I was pouring into the darn brew kettle... The end result was around 3 gallons, right?

I pulled up my edition of iBrewmaster...

BUTTERNUT STOUT!
3 gallons, thereabouts
OG: 1.062
FG: 1.017
30 SRM
(estimated mash efficiency of 86%)

3 pounds of Rahr 2-Row Pale
1 pound of Munich Malt
8 ounces of home-toasted malt
8 ounces of home-made caramel malt, est. at 100L-140L
6 ounces of Caraffa I
6 ounces of Dark Brown Sugar, added to the boil
half of a roasted butternut Squash for about 1.5 pounds, pureed
@60 minutes use 1 ounce of Cluster hops for about 40 IBU
@15 minutes, add one small cinnamon stick, 1/2 tsp of fresh-ground Nutmeg, .25 ounces of grated, fresh Ginger
Include in the full Primary (or secondary instead, if you plan to use one) with 1/4 of the cooked, pureed butternut squash
Pitch 1 full packet of Safale S-04

With Brew-in-a-bag, and a very fine grind, I'm expecting a super efficiency. I also did another overnight mash. In fact, my overnight mash went long because I got pulled away for some stuff for work in the morning, and could not get to the wort after eight hours. It was a thirteen-hour mash, then. I set the oven to 180 degrees when my wort, on the stovetop, was protein resting at 122 degrees for twenty minutes. By the time I got the wort to 154 degrees, the oven had reached 180 degrees. I put my kettle inside to mash overnight, and flipped the oven off. When I woke up, before I got an e-mail from work, I had flipped the oven back on to buy someself some more time, to 200 degrees. I had started the mash at ten o'clock, and didn't mash-out until almost eleven-fifteen.

And, my grind was very small, too. I was really aiming to pulverize this stuff, because I wanted to give BIAB a real go of it with a finer grind.

Anyway, woot for butternut squash! There's still a quarter of the squash sitting in the fridge for my wife.

Of note:

The squash that I put into the primary fermenter was microwaved just before putting it into the primary good and long, to make sure it was completely cooked and to make sure it was completely sanitary. It seemed like the easiest way to sanitize something that likes being cooked in a microwave, right?

Of note: Pictures of a brewday that was messy and spontaneous and fun.

The smell in the primary, just before pitching, was stunning. A milder dark roast, with Caraffa I instead of chocolate and medium-toasted malts instead of dark roasted malts, may not be the "perfect to style" stout, but it does ease into the stout flavors, allowing the butternut pie flavor with the sweetness of the caramel malts, to shine over the top of the dark, thick brew!

It's the sort of thing that makes me want to use exclamation points. Because the squash fell! I can make it into beer! The beer smells really good! Everything is working!

BUTTERNUT STOUT!

Pictures:

Caramel Malt Experiment #1

I have nothing against commercial caramel malts. I use them, and will use them again. Right now, though, what interests me is doing it myself. I read about a guy who made his own caramel malts at home. I've noticed in on-line discussions there's a lot of debate about whether these are actually caramel malts. You see, commercial caramel malts are made by sprouting green barley grains, then roasting them. It's just not the same to do it at home with dry grains. But, some homebrewers will tell you that you aren't changing the chemistry, just the process. The enzymes that make the whole process work are still present in the grain. Or something. I don't know. It doesn't really matter to me if I'm getting a true caramel malt, or just something different that works the same.

The thing that matters to me, as a homebrewer, is the beer. If the beer tastes really good, and the process was unique, that only makes the beer more appealing to me, because it makes it something that I cannot purchase at the store. It makes it something that I can teach to my nephews and nieces someday, when they're old enough for this hobby. It makes it artisan and craftsman and made with human hands.

Why not try to make our own caramel malts at home?

So, I'm going to try a couple different processes to produce caramel malts. This blog post will be my first experiment.

I soaked grain overnight, as if they were beans, and then rinsing them, again, like beans. 

Then, I spread them on a foil-wrapped baking sheet, and poured a little more water over them, to keep them damp during the roast.

I placed them in a cold oven, and then I set the temperature of the oven for 170 degrees (my lowest setting). 

Then, I stirred occasionally and added more water as things dried out, to keep the grains damp, for one hour and fifteen minutes.

At the end of that time, I set the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Now, it was pretty late at night, and I had some other things to do that would take a lot of my attention. Once the oven hit 350, I gave it a minute, and flipped it off, while leaving the grains in the heated oven. A few hours later, I checked and noticed there was still dampness in the grains, so I stirred and flipped the oven back on to 350. Once it struck, I gave it five minutes, then turned it off again and went to bed. In the morning, the grains were dry and a good color, so I put them in a paper bag to age.

These will age at least five days. 

Are they caramel malts? Are they some sort of super-toasted sweet malt? I don't know. I do know that they smelled grainy and sweet, and that they developed a golden red color that cooked in a bit darker during the drying phase. 

Until someone comes by to tell me precisely what I created, I'll call it Experimental Malt #1.

Man, but it was late, and I think the lesson learned here is to budget your time a little smarter. I needed to do it tonight to let it age for a few days before my next batch (hurled upon the yeast cake of Golden Cloud Ale) and I still have to roast some chocolate wheat for my next planned batch! Argh! I was so sleepy!

I'll do things differently, next time. I will roast earlier in the day. I will use a different process for the caramel malts. I will experiment, iterate, try new things!

This is a great way to keep my hand in the business while my Golden Cloud Ale is still fermenting.

Also, is it any wonder I'd want to do it myself when there's prices like this out there:

Golden Cloud Ale? Maybe. Emerald Forest Ale? Soon. First, the Prologue.

Hello world, and welcome to the new blog journal of my homebrewing adventures. For nearly two years, now, I've dabbled in homebrewing. I made mead, first. I made mistakes, first. I made things I would never make again, though they weren't unpleasant to drink. My motto, as one will learn, is drink (and/or eat) the evidence! I do not like to recreate exactly one or two things over and over again, and I treat recipes and/or kits as a place to start the brewing, not a place to keep the brewing. Experiment. Adjust. Make things different every time. Drink the evidence!

Today, I made a meteoric shift in my homebrewing. It began simply enough: I decided five gallon batches were vastly more beer than I could realistically and safely consume while maintaining employment, and I enjoyed trying out things, experimenting, iterating. Also, my wife and I are not rich. In fact, I'd say we're pretty deeply in debt to the student loan people, quite a lot, and more on that later. Basically, I can't afford to drink the beer I'd like, and I must resort to making my own. Amortizing the cost of equipment over numerous batches, one could easily produce very enjoyable beer, as good as anything expensive in the craft section, for close to the price of the very cheap beer. Particularly, all-grain, brew-in-a-bag brewing requires little equipment, but still allows for the bulk grain buys that lead to cost-effective beer!

I have, today, crossed over.

My voyage to all grain was slow. We've moved a lot these last few years. Every six months, we were somewhere new. I had no desire to buy even small new equipment when I was uncertain if we would have to be piling all we owned into a U-Haul and carrying it across town or across state or anywhere, at all.

We live in a house, now, that is owned, not rented. We can settle a little, and try to prepare the systems of our lives around our space.

In the days and weeks to come, I shall be posting my homebrewing adventures, with photos where possible, and stories of the day, always.

As my wife and I are up to our eyeballs in student loan debt (I have a Master's Degree, and she graduated from a private Art School without parental aid...) I will also be including links to things that will kick back a few dollars into my kitty, via affiliate links. I will also gladly sell you or your brewing-related company ad-space, with reasonable rates that might include free t-shirts or products. At the moment, though, I doubt with great seriousness anyone would sponsor a new blog on the tried and true subject of homebrewing.

I will also include other gastronomic discoveries from time to time, related to beer and beer brewing. For instance, have you ever made bread from your spent grains? (I have!) Have you ever made Vegan Ice Cream flavored with your beer or mead? (I have plans)

What do these things taste like? What do they look like?

Hopefully, soon, the world will find out.

Next entry: Grizzly Grain Mill, Round 1!