Basic Brewing Radio and Brew Your Own Magazine are collaborating on a set of brewing experiments to test out some of that “common knowledge” among homebrewers. Dispelling myths is one of the aims of science, but when you dispel brewing myths, you get both knowledge and beer. How could I not participate? Especially when for Experiment 1, my idea for a myth to dispel was chosen. I will not rehash the details as James and Chris have done a nice job of fleshing out the idea already.

I just finished putting my entry into the experiment into the primary fermenter. I have dubbed it “Black’s Breeches,” named for Joseph Black, the Scottish scientist who discovered, among other things, carbon dioxide. It is a Scottish Ale weighing in at 1.060 OG. It is bittered with Fuggles and uses some of Crowjoy’s homegrown hops as aroma hops. The recipe is based mostly on the winner of the 2008 GABF Pro-Am competition.

My hypothesis is that there will be very little if any detectable difference in the two treatments of the beer. If there is a difference, I do not think that there will be one or the other that is better, just a difference. I look forward to drinking the results.

I am way behind on my goings on with this hobby, but here goes the lightning headline round. The previous post was about making a wheat beer from a commercial growler. The brew day went well other than getting some whole leaf hops stuck in my siphon. I realized only after I took the original gravity reading that I had forgotten my pound of barley DME. This left a fairly weak beer, but I thought, “hey that’s OK, I need more session beers anyhow.” This combined with busily catching up at work before going on vacation led to the beer sitting in primary, a plastic bucket, for almost a month. The results? I accidentally made a Berliner Weiss! It has a clean lactic sour flavor along with the regular flavor of a wheat beer. I was quite pleased.

Also.. the vacation I mentioned was to Bulgaria, where I was able to sample many of the local beers. Unfortunately, many of them are plain old lagers, but they were decent. My wife and I toured one of the only local breweries in the country, named Болярка (Boliarka). I will have some pictures from that tour up in a future post.

I also recently transferred a Holiday Ale I made into secondary, which is tasting a bit like spicy Christmas cookies and Grandpa’s flask. Once it mellows a bit, I think it would be worth entering into a contest. We’ll see!

I am working on a starter from the settled yeast in East End Brewing’s Hefeweizen. 3 oz of DME in a quart of water, boiled for about ten minutes. The fun part is doing it in East End’s growler.

I will be using this on a beer that has a lot of unusual ingredients from all over. I received some hops from my wife’s friend in Iowa. They were a little on the yellowish side, but they had a great aroma, so I’ll use them for aroma hops. I also have the hops leftover from the Rye Pale Ale that were done in a french press into the secondary. Those have all of their alpha acids left, so they will go in at the beginning of the boil.

All in all, it should be an interesting beer. I’ll post later about how it goes.

Hurricane Ike took out the power on Sunday, and Worst Energy has not yet been able to bring it back. I think I might try to use the free time to do some old school brewing. Who needs lights anyhow?

I did manage to get to East End in Pittsburgh for growler hours on Saturday. They have a nice harvest ale on right now.

I am nearing time to bottle both my Oak-Aged Märzen and the Rye Pale Ale. I am pretty sure I can do that with no power. Fortunately, I have a gas stove.