Ugh, I knew it…falling behind on blog posting already; I have so many snippets I want to throw on here from the past week!
Sunday was Pi day; March 14 = 3.14 for those not inclined to think about it! We usually have a Pi day party, and everyone brings pies over. This year, with the home brewing bug firmly planted, I decided to put my skills to the test and brew a beer that came out at 3.14% abv.
I decided to do a lighter version of my “Caught Red Handed” American red ale that I brewed in December and was a big hit 
I have been doing all grain batches for the past three or four batches, and decided it might be easier to aim low alcohol wise with an extract batch. For the uninitiated, all grain brewing (as the name suggests) involves the steeping of only malted grains in order to get fermentable sugars out. Extract brewing involves steeping only a small amount of malted grain, and supplementing the rest with liquid or dry malt extract.
So, I modifed the recipe and added sparkling amber malt extract in place of various crystal malts (wheat). I also had kept the trub* from the red ale batch to reuse in another batch; it was the Wyeast Pacman strain that was made by Rogue breweries, and it’s used by them in most of their ales. Boy did this thing go crazy fermenting! Usually it takes a good 24 hours before you can see the yeast at work in the fermenter, but this thing was active within 8 hours, very active! I took a couple of refractometer** readings during the fermenting process, while I expect it to take easily 2 weeks for the yeast to be finished fermenting, this one ended up staying at the same reading from 5 days in through to the day I bottled it 15 days in.
To my absolute shock and awe…my calculations brought my alcohol by volume to exactly 3.14%!! Here is the final result
Original Gravity: 1.032
Final Gravity: 1.008
Alcohol by volume: 3.14%
Calories: 105 per 12oz
IBU (International Bitterness Units): 80
And the recipe for anyone interested (and for posterity):
Pi
2lbs 14oz Sparkling Amber Dry Malt Extract
8oz American Two-row Pale
8oz Crystal Malt 70-80L
1oz Chinook hops (60 min boil)
0.5oz Chinook hops (10 min boil)
1oz Centennial hops (30 min boil)
1oz Centennial hops (10 min boil)
Wyeast Pacman liquid yeast – reused from Caught Red Handed batch
Crowd reaction so far has been very positive; Brent has already requested a new batch be brewed up for the kegerator, so we have a session beer on tap at the house
Planning to finally get to my American Barleywine style batch this weekend; it’s a clone (hopefully) of Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot
This is going to be one that needs to sit for a good while, once bottled it’s going to need to sit in the back closet until about 7-9 months. Good things come to those who wait though, right?
We also had our first bottle explosion this past week. One of the White Hooters (Belgian Style Witbier – Hitachino White ale clone) decided that the bottle was not going to contain it any longer, and blew up as if I’d left it in the freezer too long! I wonder if I accidently put two candy tabs in that one?? I’ll never know I guess.
* See Wikipedia for Trub
** See HomeBrewTalk for Refractometer
Loving the posts! I think that I am going to purchase that same book, The Kind Diet. I have also been craving lentils. Have you noticed you have not seen me eat the following: McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell, and Buds. Not saying I will become a vegetarian, however, I will cut back on my meat consumption, and include more fish. I have lost 11 pounds thus far.