Growing giant pumpkins and fermenting beer inside them was a fun side project this year, and I was just thinking about one thing I learned and what it might mean. I learned that pumpkins will remain intact with fermenting beer inside them far longer than I thought. This year, I fermented inside the pumpkins for 5 days, then racked to a secondary fermenter. I racked after 5 days because I was going to visit my folks for the holidays and didn't want to mop up 10 gallons of pumpkin ale when I returned. After racking, I put the lids back on the pumpkins and set them in my back yard. 

I grew up in Sioux Falls, SD and still go back there to visit my folks at least once a year. In college (Augustana), I drank a lot of beer, but it was all basically the same kind of beer. My fizzy yellow water of choice was Old Milwaukee because it cost $5 a case, and you got part of that back when you returned the bottles. Occasionally, I would try an "exotic" beer, which at the time meant Corona, Moosehead or Becks, but I usually stuck to what was the least expensive, but still drinkable. Even if I had been more adventurous or knowlegable about beer at the time, I couldn't have found much variety. I knew one store in town that carried Guinness, but that was it. Even well-known imports like Bass didn't make it to Sioux Falls at that time. 

I brewed a pumpkin ale on Wednesday. These spiced ales are popular this time of year, but I did one thing a little differently than most — I’m fermenting the beer inside of three giant pumpkins. 

I had a great weekend, the highlight of which was the Austin ZEALOTS annual Xmas party and chili cookoff. (The Austin ZEALOTS are the Austin, Texas homebrew club I belong to.) The party is hosted every year by Corey and Angela Martin and is always one of the highlights of the ZEALOTS calendar.

Here is the suggested recipe for the BYO/BBR extract method experiment. (See my previous blog entry if you don't know what I'm referring to.) It’s a double IPA that took some inspiration from a variety of hoppy beers — including Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, Stone IPA, Racer 5, AleSmith IPA and Rogue I2PA — as well as my own IPA recipe I’ve been fiddling with. This recipe is not clone of any of the commercial beers. This is intended as a light-colored, highly-attenuated, American-style IPA/double IPA. I give both 5-gallon (19-L) and 2.5-gallon (9.5-L) versions of the recipe. An advantage of the 2.5-gallon version is that stovetop brewers can perform the full boil trial. (Note: a stovetop brewer could also do the full wort boil as a 2.5 gallon batch and one or more of the other trials as a 5-gallon batch.) If you don’t like this recipe, feel free to use a Pliny clone or the IPA/dIPA recipe of your choosing.

In the instructions for these beers, I’ll point out some things to keep in mind in order to keep the experiment as tightly controlled as possible. The basic idea is to keep everything between the two or more batches (experimental trials) identical except for the experimental variable, which in this case is the wort production method. Along these lines, it would be a good idea to buy your ingredients in bulk, so you’re not just using the same recipe, but the same exact ingredients. Use the same equipment for brewing each batch, with the possible exception of using multiple fermenters. Keep the hops frozen between batches. If possible, crush the grains yourself on brewday. 

It’s time for the third experiment in the Brew Your Own (BYO)/Basic Brewing Radio (BBR) Collaborative Experiment series. Our main idea in this series is to test worthwhile questions regarding brewing at a homebrew scale. James Spencer (host of BBR) and I choose experiments — based on reader/listener input — that have the potential to yield good results and ask other homebrewers to join us in performing the experiment. Although each individual experiment is designed to be simple enough to encourage participation, the fact that multiple homebrewers perform the same experiment allows us to place more confidence in the results if all or most of the outcomes are similar. Hopefully, the things we discover will help homebrewers brew better beer.

I got a new brewery recently, the MoreBeer 1550 “Tippy.” It is a 3-tier brewery with a sturdy frame, three 15-gallon (58 L) vessels made of heavy-grade stainless steel and all stainless fittings. A pump moves liquids around the brewery. 

I haven't posted a blog entry for awhile, so here's a scattershot update of what I've been doing and what will be coming up on my blog.

Frequently, I hear from brewers who would like to write an article for Brew Your Own (BYO), but don't know how to go about it, or even if BYO accepts unsolicited manuscripts.