Dark IPA

3lbs Pale DME
3lbs Pale Malt
1lb Wheat Malt
1lb Carastan
4oz Debittered Black Malt
8oz Sugar
2oz Northern Brewers Hops
4oz Cascade Hops
Safbrew S-33 Yeast

OG 1.060 (Actual OG was 1.059)
FG 1.016 (Actual FG was 1.020)

Mash all grain at 150f for 60 Minutes, collect wort and bring to a boil.

Boil for 60 minutes with 2oz Northern Brewers @ :60 and 2oz Cascade @ :10

Cool wort, aerate, add to carboy and pitch yeast.

Primary until final gravity is reached.

Transfer to secondary onto 2oz of cascade and dry hop for 1 week.

After dry-hopping transfer to bottling bucket onto 1/2 cup sugar dissolved in 2 cups of water.

Bottle and allow to bottle condition for 1-2 weeks.

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With that out of the way, I brewed this beer Oct 31. Fermentation went well for 2 days and from that point forward it was stuck at 1.030. Safbrew S-33 sucks! I repitched with EC-1118 yeast and it brought it down to 1.020 at which point I just bottled it. Here are some photos I took along the way:

 Ingredients

Mashing in

Hot break

 Fermentation on day two

Before bottling, it is not nearly as dark as it appears

 The end result, 12 750ml and 19 500ml bottles

I'll add a glass shot once it carbs up

2012 Hard Cider

Back in September I started my annual batch of Hard Cider. I wasn't sure if it would even happen this year due to the crop failure here in Ontario. Lucky Brantview Cider brought in apples for pressing. 

This year I kept the recipe very simple. Just 20L of preservative free cider and a pack of EC 1118 champagne yeast.  

 

Here it is two months later. I had issues getting the cider clear. I ended up adding gelatin twice and then resorted to Super-Kleer K.C. That finally cleared it out but there is still some pectin haze left. At that point I decided to just bottle it. My next batch I'll be using pectin enzyme from the start!

After all the racking I ended up with 25 750ml champagne bottles. They are currently bottle carbonating from a solution of 1C sugar dissolved in 2C of water. Once carbonated I will let them age at least 6 months, next fall they will be even better.

After bottling there was a nice sample left in my bottling bucket. This stuff tastes great already, light and tart with a good amount of fresh apple taste lingering. Alcohol content of this batch came in at 7.3% ABV.