Femme Fatale Brewing

We finally located a fridge that we were happy with (special thanks to my wife who found it, found a coupon for it, and more importantly let me buy it). Orginally, we were going to buy a used fridge or freezer. Then, we thought about the long term power costs associated with running the fridge or freeze and the higher risk of something breaking. Looking at it long term, it made more sense to acquire a new unit.

The problem with buying new of course is the sunk cost is much greater. Fridges and freezers the size we needed were cheaper then the larger models but still could run 400+ USD easy.

We were waiting for some to go on clearance and finally a fridge did at home depot. It is a 9.8 cubic foot magic chef fridge. We got it 40% off retail using clearance pricing and a coupon. The cost to run it per year is 28 dollars which is really good, especially when stacked against older used models which could be that much A MONTH.

To make it have more space inside, we are going to unscrew the inside door panel, cut a piece a sheet metal, and screw that in its place. This should give us about 6+ more inches inside the fridge. We will then custom install 2 taps for kegs (we still need to get our kegging system but it is all a work in process).

We also still need the external temperature controller for when we use the fridge for carboy fermenting. Why you say put the carboy in the fridge? Lagers. Plus even with ale, the more temperature control the better. Variations in temperature are not good for beer.

So all in all, a big investment for brewing but a good one. The fridge will serve multiple purposes (we plan to store hops and extra grain in it too, maybe booze in the freezer part).

Hefeweizen has taken off fast and strong.

Smells like an oranges and awesome.

I wasn’t able to find any blood oranges locally. So instead of a blood orange hefe it will be a sweet orange hefe. I am not yet sure if I want to just use orange zet and forgo to flesh (some brewers recommended this)  since the orange flesh I got is not as sweet as the blood orange flesh would have been. I am not sure. I still plan to make the “orange tea” and add it into the wort after it is boiled.

So after all the brewing I am doing with custom recipes, I will be left with some extra ingredients. I don’t want to waste anything, especially with the price of hops and grains what they are, so I decided to make a pale ale from the left over hops and grains.
The name comes from the fact the ingredients are “left behind” from being brewed into sweet beer heaven.

This will also be my first 90 minute boil and all grain batch. I went with a 90 minute boil to get the most out of the bittering hops. I will be using my mash tun that I built a month ago. Hopefully it works as intended!

First all grain recipe using left off stuff:

BeerSmith Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Left Behind Pale Ale
Brewer: Femme Fatale Brewing
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
————————–
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.31 gal
Estimated OG: 1.049 SG
Estimated Color: 7.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 40.9 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
————
Amount        Item                                      Type         % or IBU
8.00 lb       Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)            Grain        87.91 %
1.00 lb       Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)     Grain        10.99 %
0.10 lb       Rye, Flaked (2.0 SRM)                     Grain        1.10 %
1.00 oz       Sterling [7.50 %]  (90 min)               Hops         30.0 IBU
0.25 oz       Sterling [7.50 %]  (20 min)               Hops         4.2 IBU
0.25 oz       Liberty [4.30 %]  (20 min)                Hops         2.4 IBU
0.25 oz       Sterling [7.50 %]  (5 min)                Hops         1.4 IBU
0.25 oz       Liberty [4.30 %]  (5 min)                 Hops         0.8 IBU
0.50 oz       Williamette [5.50 %]  (5 min)             Hops         2.0 IBU
1 Pkgs        California Ale (White Labs #WLP001)       Yeast-Ale

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body, No Mash Out
Total Grain Weight: 9.10 lb
—————————-
Single Infusion, Full Body, No Mash Out
Step Time     Name               Description                         Step Temp
45 min        Mash In            Add 11.38 qt of water at 170.5 F    158.0 F

We finally got around to bottle the Angry Kitty Amble Ale and had ourselves a taste.

It’s good.

It’s damn good.

The hops comes out clearly in both the smell and the taste. The flavor is rich with malt, caramel, rye, and a nice hint of chocolate at the end. The balance is spot on. I can’t wait to see how this one is when it conditions.

For the next batch, I will probably use more hops, possibly in the middle or end of the process.

As an extra treat, I have included a video of how the priming sugar is added for bottling. It is pretty neat to watch.

primingsugar

The video was captured using my cell phone at very low res.

Not the dance, the steak. Lindsey got me a wonderful present, a full top loin primal (primals are the butcher cuts of beef from where smaller commercial cuts come from). She orginally was going to get me a full short loin primal (my favorite cut of steak, porterhouse, comes from it) but Costco didn’t have any. A top loin primal is one part of a short loin primal. The other part, tenderloin, is where filet cuts come from.

The top loin is typically cut into strip steaks and that is exactly what I did with it. I cut them into 1 inch thick steaks, pretty much what you would expect in a restaurant. The job was made much easier by using a high quality large and sharp chef’s knife. For my first time doing it they turned out very good. A few slip up here and there at the bottom of the cuts but the meat was so tender I just shaved off any mistakes. We gave some of the shave offs and trimmings to the dog and some we made into some awesome carne asade.

Ended up with 14 steaks which isn’t bad at all. You can see my scrap pile on the side.

Lindsey then took the cut steaks and vacuum packed them so they would last for a while. Some of the steaks we vacuum packed preseasoned with kosher salt and pepper. That should give the steaks some nice flavoring. We rubbed 2 of the steaks with a little olive oil for dinner later in the week. Vacuum sealing the meat makes the meat marinate much faster so they should be nice and juicy by the time we cook them (not that the meat needs it ).

Overall, great experience. Thanks go out to my wife for helping and giving me the chance to finally try my hands at some butchering. Should be a great 4th of July!

A few days late but we racked the angry kitty amber ale into the secondary Carboy. We snagged a quick taste before we put in the airlock.The nose is very sweet, not too malty, just very sugary and sweet. The taste was a pleasant surprise. We were expecting a very sweet tasting beer but instead the first flavor we got was hops.The bitterness seemed right on the money, as well as the hop selection. Besides the hops, the sweetness from the specialty grains came out very well. So far, it seems the beer is pretty well balanced.

The beer still is a little cloudy but the secondary should help with that along with a clearing agent at bottling. This time we are using Polyclar which is typically used in wine production (it clears out tannins in addition to clearing out the other junk). Originally, we were going to use Irish moss as a clarifier but some sources state that it isn’t ideal for extract brew making (it removes too many proteins). The package says to add it right before bottling but most beer brewing sources recommending adding it at least a day before (so it can settle out).

So far so good for the first version of Angry Kitty Amber Ale. Next one should be even better.

Brewing blog over at Warpstorm was getting large so I thought I might as well install a blog here on the Femme Fatale Domain.

So we will see how this goes verse the Warpstorm blog. I will probably keep updating both, at least for a while.

I need to tweak the site more, add back in the Femme Fatale header, maybe add in some widgets, maybe a different/tweak the theme, etc. For now though this is fine.