Dos Amigos' Spicy Pumpkin Ale

We are now approaching to holiday season, you can start to feel the air changing, see some Halloween decorations, read about unfair taxes to be applied for Black Friday shopping and even see a couple of houses where someone decided to start putting out Christmas decorations!!! We all react different but, for the homebrewers this is translated as: SPICY SEASON ALE!!!

And just to follow this holiday spirit we have decided to brew our own Spicy Pumpkin Ale!!!

Let's share it you:

Brew date: October 21, 2012

4.5kg Pale Ale Malt
0.5kg Caramel 30
0.5kg Munich Malt
0.1kg Chocolate malt
1oz Perle 9% AA@60min
0.8kg Roasted pumpkin puree
1 tbsp cinnamon @7min
1.5 tbsp nutmeg @7min
4 cloves @7min
1 star anis @7min
1 whirfloc tablet @10min
Yeast S04

O.G: 1.056
F.G: not measured yet
ABV%: not measured yet

We mix/dissolved the pumpkin puree into the mash tun with the strike water

 Added the rest of the grains

Personally, we believe this is one of the best parts of brewing; the sweet smell you get from the malt is awesome, you get addicted to it!!!

 Happy brewers!!!

 Whirlpooling after 1h mashing @69C

 Getting the wort

 Adding the hop

 Finally... the spices

 After cooling the wort we added the yeast and set it apart for fermentation.

Since we haven't bottle this brew yet, there are no photos, we promise we will make sure to document it and post some pictures.

We are expecting this brew to be ready for November 24; where we will not only taste it but, celebrate thanksgiving and my lovely wife's birthday!!! There will definitely be pictures of that.

Hope you have enjoyed this new entry of our blog, we have a lot more recipes on target and we hope to continue sharing them with you.

Relax and have a home brew!!

See you soon!!!

Dos Amigos Homebrewing.

Obama Honey Porter

Since we decided to start the blog just now, we don´t have documentation regarding the previous brews we have done so, we will start with this one!!

I want to thank "La Bodega de Chema" for the great workshop on how to brew this awesome beer!!!

Let´s start with the recipe:

Brew date:  October 2, 2012

6kg Pale Ale
0.5kg Munich malt
0.5kg Caramel 30 mal
0.167kg Black Malt
0.083kg Chocolate Malt
0.5kg honey  @5min
1oz Perle @60min
1oz Tradition @15min
1 Whirfloc tablet @10min
Yeast Saf-Ale 04

O.G (original gravity): 1.058
F.G (final gravity): 1.006
ABV% (Alcohol by volume): 6.8%

Since we are not profesional brewers, we won´t dare to provide deep details of the process, but we gladly share some pictures of what we did!!
 
Equipment

 Grain Bill

 Grinding the grains

 Mashing: 4Gal @68ºC

 Whirlpooling: 4Gal @80ºC

 Getting the wort

 Fly sparging

 Starting to boil

 Adding hops

 Adding honey

 Filtering to fermentator

 Adding yeast and going to rest for the next 2 weeks!!!

After 2 weeks it was time to fill the bottles, we use natural carbonation in our brew using 3/4 cup of "Azukar" disolved in 2 cups of water, process date: October 13, 2012

Washing the bottles

 Siphoning (ok... I don´t know how to turn the picture in the blog, it is ok in my PC but when I uploaded to the blog it changed... but you get the point)

 Sugar added

 Filling bottles

 Getting caps on

 Finally, my daughter making sure the bottles have no leaks!!!

This is the process we followed to brew our Obama Honey Porter, we appreciate your comments to help us improve the process and if you would like us to try a recipe, please let us know and we will try to brew it, document it and post it in our blog.

BTW, although there is no picture, we make sure to sanitize everything that touched the wort.

Hope you have enjoyed our 1st entry, we will come back with a review of the final result soon, this brew should be ready to taste on October 27/28, 2012, if you are interested to be part of the tasting pannel, let us know and we´ll try to arrage it, can´t promise anything  but we´ll do our best!!!

See you soon!!!!

Welcome to our Blog!!!

As beer lover, it is your personal quest to taste different beers and experiment the amazing variety of flavors and aromas that you get from it.

It is with this quest in mind, that we started to ask ourselves: why couldn't we brew our own beer? One that would provide to us our the so much desired malt flavors and hop aromas that we couldn't find in Costa Rica's market.

As with every hobby, we started our research, to understand the home brewing process and where could we acquired the ingredients for proper home brewing.

We were surprised to find out that home brewing culture in Costa Rica has started, and that there are a couple of stores where to buy our supplies, clear doubts, get trained and make new friends.

The home brewing community around the world is really united, we are all following the same quest: "to brew a great beer that can be enjoyed and replicated around the world", there are no secrets among homebrews, we all share the passion for beer!!!

With this blog, we want to share our home brewing experiences, share recipes, get advices and if we are able, even provide some advice; hopefully we can encourage those how are about to take the decision to become home brewers to step up and initiate in this gratifying art.

We welcome everyone who want to share our brewing joy and provide us with advise to improve our brews.

In this blog, we will document the recipes we brew and will comment on them once we taste them.

Hope you enjoy our experiences!!!

Thanks.

Dos Amigos' HomeBrewing