Home Remedies

Hey there folks.

Our first brew is getting really close. things are as close as they can be to in place without beer actually fermenting. I wanted to do something to get the good people of Oklahoma excited about my beer, and since you can't taste it just yet, I thought the next best thing would be for you all to try and brew it.

So here are three homebrew size recipes for 5 gallon batches of some of the more warm weather appropriate beers I'll be releasing:
(sorry extract brewers, I'm not exactly sure what appropriate substitutions would be)

Lazy Bully Lager:
7 lb Pilsner malt
4 lb Munich 2 or Dark Munich (I prefer Weyerman, but other brands will do)
8 oz carahell
4 oz carared

Mash at 153 for 60 minutes or until conversion is complete (I prefer to do a step mash with this one on the big system, but I know that's a pain for homebrewing. 153 should get things just about right(

After mash and run-off is complete, its boil time. this beer has a 90 minute boil with the following hop schedule:

.5 oz northern brewer hops @90
1 oz Northern brewer hops @15
.5 oz Northern Brewer and 1 oz Tettnang @KO

Cool to between 60 and 65 degrees and ferment with a steam beer yeast. I prefer the san fran lager strain from wyeast, but they're all good.


The Molly Rae Wit Beer:
5 lb pilsner malt
3 lb white wheat malt
1 lb unmalted wheat
1 lb flaked oats

I'd really recommend a protein rest for this one, but if you can't make it happen that's no big deal. rest at 149 until conversion.

Boil for sixty minutes

.5 oz perle hops at 60
since this is a wit beer, you're sure gonna need some spices. A half ounce of orange peel for 10 minutes and a teaspoon or 2 of corriander at 5 minutes should do the job. I don't think I'll release my exact spice blend, but some lavender and chamomile wouldn't be amiss for a clone beer.
.5 oz tettnang at KO

ferment with a classic belgian wit strain, try to hold it around 68 to 70 degrees.

Snake Oil IPA
10 lbs pale malt or american 2 row
1 lb biscuit malt
2 lb Munich 2 or Dark Munich
1 lb cara-red
8 oz cara aroma

Mash this around 153. I know homebrewers can sometimes be shy about using more then whatever percent of crystal malt Gordon Strong has advised to use in any given beer, but trust me here. the sweetness and extra body is going to balance really really well with the hops that are going into this beer. Also, a tablespoon of gypsum in the mash might help give a better mouth-feel, depending on your local water chemistry.

This one is a 120 minute boil.
1 oz perle @ 120
2 oz fuggles @ 15
4 oz EKGs @ 5

ferment with your favorite english ale yeast, and dry hop with 2 oz of EKG and 2 oz of Fuggles.

Who's got the funk?

Today, while many of you were likely asleep, resting up for your barbecues, I was hard at work. I was in the brewery in Pittsburgh filling some barrels of beer with the help of the guy who will be taking over my post. The last barrel that we were supposed to fill came up short. And that's when things got exciting. 

It's unbecoming for a doctor in good standing with the community to myself to admit a thing like this, but there are some things about brewing that still just get me going. And taking a perfectly good beer like the Imperial Irish Red we moved today and just funking it up so good is one of those things. I don't know if there will be a time in my career when this stuff gets less fun. I sure hope not.

That barrel of beer was about a third empty, and we need to make it all the way full in a day or two in order to prevent a serious bit of oxidization. We did purge it with co2 before we filled it to be safe, but wood is porous and soon there's gonna be too much atmosphere in our beer. So we hatched a plan.

As I mentioned before, I spend a lot of time working on and pondering other sour and wild beers. And just so happens, we've got a strain of wild yeast that needs a new home. The other brewer mentioned that a really clean brett character would be great in this beer, and even though that sounds like an oxymoron, I tend to agree. We've got just the boys for the job, and will be adding the yeast strain along with a similar beer to the barrel tomorrow to make something new and hopefully very tasty.

That beer won't make it to Oklahoma, and due to the nature of wild yeast, it will probably never be replicated exactly the same ever again. I probably won't get to taste it in all it's finished, funky glory.

That is the coolest thing I've ever heard of. The idea that you can take a barrel and a few million misunderstood but well meaning wild yeast cells, and with a little love you can keep putting out unique beers that change by the batch. Drinking a beer that is totally unique, and can't be replicated is another one of those things that really gets me going.

A lot of breweries don't like having wild yeast in their facilities. That's understandable. Those little fellas, even though they're just trying to help, can often make their way into places they're not wanted. And once you've got a tank infected with wild yeast, it's pretty hard to get it out. And you probably ruined a batch of beer finding out you had the wild yeast in there in the first place. 

I bet it'll be even harder for a gypsy like me to find a place for my sour and wild stuff. if breweries are hesitant about taking the risk with their own products, they will very likely be hesitant about taking the risk with mine. 

I've never been one to shy away from hard work, and I will hopefully be giving some kind hearted wild yeast of my own a home and a healthy meal sometime in the near future. That way when people ask who's got the funk you can say "Doc. Doc Buckman's got the funk."