The Original Steiglbock finishes off an eventful day making Home Brew #3

Ever since the success of my first home brew, the winter ale King Moonracer's Revenge, I've been telescopically focused on making two beers, a Belgian IPA and a hoppy Belgian Red Ale, which is inspired by The Breury's Loakal Red. We're bottling the Belgian IPA Monday. It's time to make the Belgian Red.

This is only my third home brew but I want to be ambitious in my beer-every-day year, so I rather than follow anyone's recipe I designed my own. I did a lot of research on malt and hops and decided on specific grains that will give the light and medium caramel malt flavor as well as the 'red' color I want, and then throw several grains characteristic of Belgians that will add sweetness and a big malt body to compliment the strong American hop presence. Where I really diverged is with the yeast. I researched a few Belgian Red Ales and most of them used Irish or English yeast. I really want that Belgian sweetness and ester complex that I enjoy so much, so I'm going the road less traveled with a Belgian Strong Ale Yeast and crossing my fingers.

UNTITLED BELGIAN RED ALE

Malt Extract:    Alexander's Pale Extract   6 lbs
                       Coopers Plain Light DME 2 lbs

Sugar:              Belgian Light Candi Sugar 1 lb

Grain Bill:         Caramel/Crystal Malt 40 L 6 oz
                        Caramel/Crystal Malt 60 L 6 oz
                        Belgian Special B 2oz (this is a really dark grain)
                        Caravienne Malt 4 oz                       

                        Aromatic Malt 4 oz            

Hop Schedule: Centennial (10.5%) .5oz at 60 mins
                       Centennial (10.5%) .5oz at 45 mins
                       Columbus(15.4%) .75oz at 30 mins
                       Cascade (6.6%) 1.25oz at 15 mins
                       Centennial (10.5%) 1.5 oz DRY HOP

Yeast:            Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale
                    

Potential Alcohol 6.8%
59 IBU's 

Starting Gravity 1.068

Color is 12 SRM (Copper/Red is 10-14 SRM).

Not only is this recipe my own creation, but I'm also making beer without David's guiding hand for the first time. David's in Munich so Tiff is thankfully helping me out.

Wort chiller? Check. Newly built spice rack? Check. Linus the Storm Trooper Cookie Jar?...Time to brew

Always have to drink a beer during brewing so I bought a Drake's Imperial Red Ale to inspire us. God that stuff is good.

Brewing was...a learning process today. There were moments of "oh, I was supposed to add the sugar then," and "what's that black stuff coming up?" HA. What could I do? What's done is done. It wouldn't the first time I learned the hard way. So I burned some malt; the worst that will happen is there will be some 'toasted' notes that I wasn't expecting in the beer, but there also may not be any difference. Just gotta wait and see.

So afterwords I'm enjoying today's beer pleasantly surveying my two alcoholic babies. David brought back several brews from Europe and today's brew is from Austria, the Steiglbock.

Belgian Red Ale on the left, the soon to be bottled Belgian IPA on the right

The Steiglbock is an intense lager and my first light colored bock. It has a surprisingly big malt characteristics which are...interesting...but it's not my type of party beer. THE ISLAND rating.


Thanks to Tiff for helping me out! Crossing my fingers, today was a day of many home brewing firsts (good and bad) and as always, excited to taste the outcome.