Ale Monthly: Knockshock Brewing Collaborative

Jobless and pinching pennies, what better idea, as six packs of craft beer are reaching $7 ON SALE, than to take up the DIY spirit and brew your own? I've been homebrewing for almost 5 years now, and doing all-grain batches for 4, and at roughly 50 cents a beer, what better to do on a weekday afternoon than a couple of 5 gallon batches? My Knockshock Brewing companion Greg and I have moved on to additional money saving measures, including doing low hop beers or using increased alpha acid hops, using simple grain bills with mostly affordable, American 2-row malt, and reusing yeast by pitching off slurries (up to 6 times or so.)

I've been writing my own recipes for a few years now after taking inspiration and learning how to build a beer from Ray Daniels great book Designing Great Beers. And with a program such as the Recipator or ProMash, calculating your grain bill and results (ABV, IBU and SRM) become quite simple. Granted, there are some factors that vary, such the mash efficiency and fermentation temperature, that the limited system cannot account for. C'est la vie. I've tried replicating batches, and simply put, with an all grain system at the scale we are producing these beers, it is virtually impossible. So I've embraced this spirit and rarely make a beer twice. Generally, if it turns out so good the first time that I want to make it again, it invariably disappoints.

In any case, here are some photos of the most recent brewing activity, and recipes of those beers if you would like to try them at home yourself. I've been brewing once a week for three weeks strong, should have a nice stash showing up in a few months. I'll keep you posted of how they turn out.

A brew with a view

Knockshock Sour Brown

really a take on Russian River's Supplication. I love this beer, and couldn't find any ideas out there to base my recipe on, so this is my stab at it. It doesn't have a lot of the bugs that Supplication has, but it is really in the spirit of light, refreshing sour beers with a bit of malt complexity and depth, like of you revisit my Sours and Chocolate night.

8 lbs American 2-row

1.5 lbs Wheat Malt

1 lb Carapils

12 oz Belgain Aromatic

6 oz Belgian Biscuit

4 oz Honey Malt

Mashed at 148 degrees for 1 hour.

Added 1 oz of Hallertau Pellet Hops, 3.8 AA, at 60 minutes

Cooled to 120 degrees, added White Labs Lactobacillus Delbrukii to the wort directly into a glass primary.

Pitched White Labs Belgian Ale yeast slurry the next morning. Transferred after 7 days to glass secondary.

Add 4 oz french oak, medium toast, soaked in chardonnay for 2 weeks, after 14 days.

Bottling TBD, probably at 1 month.

Sparge: rising the sugars off the grains

Spigot controls the flow of the sweet wort

Knockshock Sour Saison x5

This is another one of our 5x experiments. The first took place three years ago, using a base wort of 5 gallons with 5 different hopping schedules. I can't say it was easy, or went off without flaw. Boiling 5 different little 1 gallon worts certainly increases some of the idiosyncrasies of homebrewing: different gravities for each running, more kettle carmelization, different hop utiliztion rates. Not to mention how much of a pain in the ass it is to boil 5 batches, then transfer them, and the bottle off of each. However, this one seemed much simpler: same wort, same hops, same primary yeast - but different secondary yeasts. Each a different sour beer contributor. We've included Brett Bruxxelis in three beers, wild bacteria in two, Ommegedon dregs in one and oak in another. The base beer was formulated to be a pretty neutral, saison like beer (honey malt = funk), with a west coast citrus blanket of Amarillo to balance the sourness, much like many of the nouveau sour beers, like Ommengang Ommegedon, de Proef Signature ales, ect.

8 lbs American 2-row
2 lbs Malted Wheat
.75 Honey Malt
.25 American Vienna
.25 Flaked Barley

50 Minute mash at 145 degrees. 20 Minute Mash out at 120 degrees.

.5 oz Amarillio 10 AA, at 60 Minutes
.75 oz Amarillo, 10 AA, at 20 Minutes
1 oz Amarillo, 10 AA, at 5 Minutes

Cooled to 80 degrees, Pitched White Labs Belgian Ale. Transferred after one week to glass secondary. One week later to 5-1 gallon tertiaries, and bottled 1/6th of it as a control group (to taste the difference between the bugs).

Added a beer of 2 lbs wheat DME beer to 5 other jugs (needed additional gravity for the bugs, the Belgian had attenuated too much):

#1 with Brett Brux
#2 with Brett Brux and Oak
#3 with Brett Brux + exposed for a night 1 week in
#4 with Ommegedon Dregs
#5 with Infected Grain Juice left out for a night.

Bottle when deemed "ready".

Wort Boil on the Propane Burner

Mmm, wort.

Chiller porn

Knockshock Bourbon Barrel Smoked Porter

I've done a couple of smoked porters, one just straight up and another with figs added (which was a hot mess, but delicious). Either case, I wanted a little extra punch to this one, and have experimented with simulated barrel aging before (a peat smoked disaster ... one of my only two or three straight up awful calls in my 5 year history), I decided this was the beer to do it with. There is always a question of smoking your own, what type of smoke flavoring, and how much to use. There is certainly a wide range of opinions, but I've found that using Wyermanns Smoked Malt is a pretty safe way to go. They use beechwood, and is pretty mild, and you can use it for between 10 and 25 percent of the grist for a smoked porter, depending on your smoke tolerance and grain bill. As for the barrel aging, I would love to have the space and money for a barrel, but for now I have to go for the simulation. Once again, much debate, do you use chips, cubes, old staves? I go for the American Oak chips, which have a huge surface area, and leave them in a minimal time, probably 3 days, after boiling, toasting them, and letting them spend a week in beam. A few ounces will do. Again, if this was an Imperial Porter, I'd probably go for more chips and/or longer contact, but use caution.

9 lbs American 2-row
2.25 lbs Wyermanns Smoked Malt
1.25 lbs Carafa Malt
12 oz American Munich
10 oz American Chocolate
8 oz American Crystal 60L
4 oz Black Patent Malt

Mash at 145 Degrees for 1 hour.

Add 1 oz 9.0 Columbus Hops at 60 Minutes

Ferment for 1 week, transfer, add hops 3 days before bottling, roughly 2 weeks later.