Biere Transvesti (American Pale Ale) - Recipe & Brew Day

I just finished listening to The Brewing Network podcast featuring Shea Comfort discussing yeast blending and oaking. I was pretty impressed with his talk on blending wine yeast and and beer yeast to create a fruit like quality in your beer without using the fruit. Shea went on to say that white wine yeast generally fall into 2 categories, those that give off apple and pear qualities, and those that give off tropical and citrus qualities. Red wine yeast on the other hand can give off cherry or berry qualities. While wine yeasts, like beer yeast, are strains of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae they are incapable of fermenting maltotriose, a type of grain sugar. Shea suggested a few ways to deal with the maltotriose issue. One heavily discussed option was the use of Convertase AG-300 enzyme, which would break up long chain sugars (including maltotriose) into simple sugars, thus making it possible for the wine yeast to ferment all of the sugars until it is bone dry. By splitting a batch into 2 fermenters, one could add ale yeast to one batch and Convertase AG-300 & wine yeast to a second smaller batch, then blend later. Unfortunately I couldn't find the Convertase AG-300, so I'm going to try the blending method, two-thirds on ale yeast and one-third on wine yeast, minus the Convertase AG-300. This should be interesting...

Biere Transvesti (American Pale Ale) – Recipe & Brew Day Stats

Brewed: Monday, July 12, 2010

Racked: Sunday, July 18, 2010 (Combined the 1/3rd's Lalvin Yeast: 71B-112 batch with the 2/3rd's WLP001: California Ale Yeast batch)

Bottled/Kegged: July 22, 2010

Batch Size (Gal): 7.50

Brewhouse Efficiency: 70%

Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Original Gravity: 1.052

Final Gravity: 1.012

SRM: 7.50

IBU: 42.70

ABV: 5.25%

Grains/Sugars (Total Grain Bill (Lbs.): 15.38)

13.13 lb. American Pale Malt (2~Row)

1.25 lb. Crystal 40L Malt

1.00 lb. Munich Malt

Hops

0.32 oz. Columbus, 14.00%, pellet, 60min

0.53 oz. Simcoe, 12.40%, pellet, 15min

0.35 oz. Citra, 12.30%, pellet, 15min

0.66 oz. Simcoe, 12.40%, pellet, 10min

0.32 oz. Columbus, 14.00%, pellet, 10min

0.79 oz. Simcoe, 12.40%, pellet, 1min

0.51 oz. Citra, 12.30%, pellet, 1min

0.40 oz. Cascade, 7.40%, pellet, 1min

Yeast

WLP001: California Ale Yeast 1000ml. starter

Lalvin Yeast: 71B-1122 500ml. starter

Mash/Boil/Fermentation

H2O/Grain Ratio: 1.24 qt/lb

Sacch. Rest Temp/Time: 151*F/75min

Mash Out Temp/Time: 168*F/15min

Sparge Temp/Time: 170*F/30min

Pre-Boil Vol: 9.67

Post-Boil Vol: 7.61

Evaporation Rate(per hour): 15%

Ferment Temp: 66°F - Primary / 68*F - Secondary

Primary Fermentation (Days): 6

Secondary Fermentation (Days): 4