BrewBrain Sports Investing

I’m starting anew with Grain School!  I attempted grain school around a year ago with small one-gallon batches, but for various reasons, I gave up quickly.

I’ve been throwing recipes together and generally having success. The beers I’ve been serving up are usually very good. That said, when I throw Pale Chocolate and Crystal 120 in the same Amber recipe, I can’t tell you for sure which flavors I can confidently attribute to which grain. This is what Grain School should teach me.

I’m back at it now, but this time with full five-gallon batches of beer.  Here’s what I’m doing:

I started out with my first - and base - recipe.  It’s a simple pale ale very similar to one I’ve done a few times now:

8lbs US 2-row
1.5lbs Vienna
1lbs Crystal 40
.25lbs Flaked Barley
Centennial .8oz FWH
Centennial .7oz 20min
Centennial .5ox 3 min

I’ve done this same recipe, with minor variations on several occasions. It’s always been a very good beer and I’m confident I can make single ingredient changes to it and end up with five gallons of beer I’m very happy with. I could have made the base recipe very simple and left out the Vienna and flaked barley, but I’m not so sure I’d REALLY enjoy the beer the way I want to.

The grains I’m interested in are:
Munich
Vienna
Victory
Chocolate
Pale Chocolate
Black Patent
Roasted Barley
Honey Malt
Melanoidin
Crystal 60
Crystal 75
Crystal 120
Special B

I’ll likely add others once I’m finished with these, but I figure I can brew about any style I’m interested in and have a very good idea what I’ll end up with while formulating my recipes once I’ve got good notes on these.

So far I’ve got three batches in various stages of completion:

The base recipe has been in a keg gassing at 12psi for almost a week.

The Munich batch is ready to hit the crash cooling fridge over the weekend. I substituted 4 lbs of Munich for 4 lbs of 2-row in that one. It will be kegged next weekend.

I brewed the Chocolate batch last weekend. I added 1/2 pound of Chocolate Malt to the base recipe, making it an American Brown Ale. It will be kegged in three weeks. I’ll not only know exactly what Chocolate Malt brings to the party, I’ll also know generally how much is needed in a recipe. I’m willing to add just a little too much in order to really taste the flavors added by the new grain. I’ve always used Choco in conjunction with Roasted Barley in stout recipes. Neither grain has been used without the other.

Between those, I brewed a version of my last American Amber that was a huge hit at a poker party I threw a few weeks ago. That keg was tapped during the party and only had a couple pints left in it by the end. This new recipe was basically a “leftovers” beer. I had a bunch of crushed grains left from previous batches and/or trips to the LHBS and I wanted to use them up. So, I’ve got a bigger version of the hit Amber now in the bucket. It’ll be kegged in two weeks. It’s 9 lbs US 2-row, 1.5ish lbs Munich, about 1.5 total lbs of Crystal (60 and 120 in combo), Centennial and Amarillo hops added at several stages throughout the boil. We’ll see what happens.