Ska's Pinstripe Red Clone

I should probably snap some photos of the brewing process.

After a fast and furious start to home brewing, we took a break for about a month. Break time over. Last weekend we brewed another back of Red Hook Porter clone. The first batch of Porter was probably the best so far, so I have high hopes for this one. It ended up at the same original gravity as the first one, which is a good sign. The only thing we changed was the addition of a tiny (about 1 oz) amount of chocolate malt for the mini mash.

But enough about porter... this is about yesterday's near-disastrous attempt at brewing a clone of Ska's Pinstripe Red. This is the recipe of the month at The Brew Hut, so the ingredients were 10% off. However, there sure are a lot of ingredients, so it was still a relatively expensive batch. Recipe below.

The process started out just fine. Since the 30qt brew kettle doesn't fit well on the electric cooktop range, we brewed outside using the burner from a turkey fryer, which was borrowed from Chris's dad (thanks, Leo!). This has worked well for the previous five batches, all boiled during the severe Denver Drought.

Drought time came to an end last week when the sky opened up for days at a time. I thought we would have a break from the rain on Saturday, so I fired up the kettle and began the mini-mash. Just as we finished the mini-mash and added the LME, rain drops started falling. We turned off the heat and covered everything with umbrellas as we went inside to check the radar. It looked like it was only going to rain for awhile, so we figured we could pick it up later. A couple of hours passed and it looked like it was only going to get worse, so I made the call: bring the kettle inside and do the boil on the stove.

The kettle had been sitting outside in 40-degree temps for about 2 hours, and the wort had only cooled 20 or 30 degrees. It took awhile to get boiling on the stove, but the rest of the boil went fine. It smelled pretty good when it went into the fermenter, thanks to the flameout addition of Cascade and Tettnanger hops. As it turns out, I didn't read the recipe correctly, so instead of 1.5 oz of Liberty as First Wort Hops, I ended up just adding 3 oz in at the start of the boil.

Here's the recipe:

Ska's Pinstripe Red Ale Clone:

7 lbs Light Liquid Malt Extract

Grain:

- 12 oz Carapils

- 8 oz Crystal 80

- 4 oz Red Wheat Malt

- 2 oz Crystal 120

Hop schedule:

1.5 oz Liberty (First Wort Hop)

1.5 oz Liberty (60 min)

1 oz Cascade (0 min)

1 oz Tettnanger (0 min)

Yeast:

California Ale V, WLP051

American Ale II, WYeast 1272

Safale US-05

Note: First Wort Hop means adding directly after the mash, before brining the wort to a boil (see more at BeerSmith). The "0 min" hop additions are apparently also known as "flame-out" additions. Add the hops at the end of the 60 minute boil and leave them in there for 10-15 minutes as you cool the wort. These are two things I learned yesterday.

Great Divide

Went hiking in Golden Gate Canyon State Park today. It was beautiful, even though we had to deal with intermittent light rain. We'll post pictures soon.

On the way back, we tried to stop by Golden City Brewery, "the second largest brewery in Golden." They stop serving at 6:30pm every day, so we missed the boat. Onward to Great Divide in downtown Denver.

We hadn't been to the Great Divide taproom since November. Besides the usual suspects, they had Rumble IPA and Smoked Baltic Porter. The porter was pretty much perfect. Similar to O'Fallon's Smoked Porter without invoking bacon, and balanced enough to drink more than one. Of course, I only drank one and then moved onto the Rumble IPA. This is easily one of my favorite beers. If you've heard me bullshit about beer, you know that I'm all about balance. I really don't care for the over the top west coast IPAs, nor do I care much for one-dimensional (I'm looking at you, Shiner Bock) darker beers. Rumble IPA is wood-aged, 7.1% ABV, balanced bliss. Snag some, if you can find it. We picked up a six pack on our way out of the brewery.

Now, if we can only make it to Golden City on time..

Hop-ricot

Support your local brewery. Or breweries. Seriously. You'll never know what kind of delicious beer you're missing out on until you find and then visit them.

Our new home is very close to Dry Dock Brewing Company in Aurora, CO. Dry Dock won "Small Brewing Company of the Year" at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival. They've also won "Best Brewpub" the past three years from the local ABC affiliate, which is quite a feat given the number and quality of brewpubs in the area. Of course, when I think of a brewpub, I think of a restaurant that brews beer. There's no kitchen at Dry Dock. There is popcorn, and you're welcome to bring your own food.

The real star is the beer. I have much respect for any brewery that has a Double IPA included in their year-round ("home fleet") lineup. Especially when it's a damn tasty Double IPA. They also tap a Firkin keg every Friday afternoon. From what I gather, it's usually one of their regular beers with a twist. Today's Firkin is called Hop-ricot and is half IPA, half Apricot Blonde. It was fantastic. Hazy peach color with a hop bite on the front and apricot finish. Sort of like a kicked up Magic Hat #9.

So far I've really enjoyed the Pale, IPA, Double IPA, and ESB from Dry Dock. I look forward to trying the rest of their beers. What's brewing in your neighborhood?