Rogue Dead Guy (Can You Brew It)

I recently spent a week in San Francisco where I drank some incredibly good beer. Best of all was Rogue Dead Guy on draught at the Rogue pub.

I had tried some rogue beers here in oz several years ago, but had not been impressed. Like many imported american beers at the time, they had been badly treated and didn't give a realistic impression of the quality of the beer. The situation has improved considerably since then, with chilled shipping being the most important factor.

Anyhow, I just had to have a go at this beer, and I'm trying the 'Can you brew it' recipe. We're looking for quite a high OG here. Not a big deal in a multi-vessel set up, but with brew in a bag this can be tricky. A slightly high mash temperature will also reduce our potential raw wort gravity.

I recirculated this mash for 75 minutes at 67C, then did a mash out at 75C for 20 minutes. A small additional step was to rinse the grains with about 3L of ~75C water after removing the grain bag from the mash vessel. During the boil I kept an eye on the refractometer readings and ended the boil when I got a reading of 17.25ish. This translates to and SG of 1.067 and my hydrometer later confirmed this.

This was chilled and immediately had 22g of rehydrated Safale US-05 pitched to it. Tried to get Pacman, it's my favourite yeast for lots of brews, so it would have been nice to be able to use it for a Rogue clone. Unfortunately there was none to be found. Fermentation is quite vigorous and is taking place at 17C. Can't wait to get this one on tap.

Here's the recipe, I've subbed Saaz for Sterling and added a little nugget to bump up the IBUs to my desired level (~45):

Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 67.4     5.14 kg.  Pale Ale Malt (2-row)         Australia      1.037      2
 22.8     1.74 kg.  Munich Malt (Bolander)        USA            1.036     10
  9.8     0.75 kg.  Simpsons Crystal Pale                 UK             1.035     34

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  5.00 g.     Nugget                            Whole   13.00   8.2  75 min.
 40.00 g.     Perle                             Pellet   6.30  34.8  75 min.
 40.00 g.     Saaz                         Pellet   3.00   0.0  0 min.

2 x packets of Safale US-05

Kolsch

I have been brewing lately, but not blogging about it. I'll try to keep this a little more up to date.

Decided to brew something light and inoffensive for Christmas, as I have family visiting who are not especially in love with big hoppy brews. This is from Brewing Classic Styles and I've brewed it twice before, though I used the White Labs yeast both times, here I'm using WY2565. Wyeast is very easy for me to get, but white labs is a pain to get hold of. My former source in New South Wales is now out of business and I don't think I'll bother finding a new one.

The grain bill and hop schedule are both very simple. Unfortunately I only realised when I got home from the brew shop that my Hersbrucker hops were 1.8% AA. This was about half what I expected so I threw in a small amount of nugget to bump up the IBUs to something reasonable.

I recirculated this mash at 65C for 60 minutes, then did a rest at 72C for 20 minutes. I no-chilled this and took a 2L starter to which I pitched a full packet of WY2565. About 18 hours later I pitched this into the full batch at 17C. 12 hours later (this morning) I had noticeable activity.

Here's the recipe:


Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 95.4     4.67 kg.  Pilsener                        Germany        1.037      1
  4.6     0.23 kg.  Vienna Malt                   Germany        1.036      4

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 40.00 g.    Hersbrucker                   Pellet   1.80  10.6  70 min.
  6.00 g.     Nugget                            Pellet  13.00  11.5  70 min.


WYeast WY2565 Kölsch