Femme Fatale Brewing

Been too busy brewin to update! Been making a lot of mead and soda. Weather needs to get cooler so we can start up the beer again!

After some discussion, we decided to go ahead and enter the Angry Kitty Ale into the Sam Adam’s Longshot Competition. The Angry Kitty Ale has some flaws but even with the flaws, the feedback would be nice to get. So off it went.

What a great and busy Saturday. Big Brew day was fun. Good food and beer, plus brewin!

We are back baby. Got a big one to brew. Name comes for the Mosin Nagant’s caliber.

Type: All Grain
Date: 3/27/2009

Batch Size: 6.00 gal
Brewer: Femme Fatale Brewing
Boil Size: 7.50 gal     Asst Brewer: Ninja
Boil Time: 60 min     Equipment: Brew Pot (12.5 gal) and Igloo Cooler (10 Gal)
Taste Rating(out of 50): 35.0     Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00
Taste Notes:

Ingredients

Amount     Item     Type     % or IBU
20.00 lb     Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)     Grain     85.11 %
2.00 lb     Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)     Grain     8.51 %
1.00 lb     Special B Malt (180.0 SRM)     Grain     4.26 %
0.50 lb     Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)     Grain     2.13 %
1.50 oz     Alchemy [15.20 %] (60 min)     Hops     45.8 IBU
1.00 oz     Chinook [13.00 %] (60 min)     Hops     26.1 IBU
1.00 oz     Centennial [10.00 %] (10 min)     Hops     7.3 IBU
2 Pkgs     Nottingham (Danstar #-) [Starter 25 ml]     Yeast-Ale

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.104 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.024 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 10.46 %
Bitterness: 79.1 IBU
Calories: 491 cal/pint
Est Color: 47.1 SRM

Femme Fatale just completed its first all grain batch! We brewed the Scottish Export and it smelled great.

Here is a lovely picture of the mash tun in action.

Wanna give blood now?

More on the beer later!

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.

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.

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.