Lady Falcon Brewday 2022
by Tiffany Ashrafi
Date of brewday: 7.10.22
Style: American Brown Ale - “Western Brown, A (wo)Man’s Beer”
Led by: Tiffany Ashrafi, Jenna Bonney, and Gavin Martin (our master technician)
Recipe: Intertwined & adapted from a recipe I found on BYOB, “Eastern Brown, A Man’s Beer”, & Cigar City’s Maduro Brown.
Batch size: 35 gallons
SG: 1.051
FG (varies): 1.006 – (see individual brewery stories below)
Get the recipe here (.pdf)
A lovely balmy/sweltering hot day brewing with some of my best friends – what could go wrong, right? Nothing, actually! Our brewday pretty much went without a hitch, with special thanks to those that gave our systems a very necessary facelift & upgrade. With a crew of 7 ladies - Jenna Bonney, Kathy Fairbrother, Abby Pina, Fallon Roberts, Sarah Peters, Pam Aitchison, and myself – plus Gavin Martin (master technician) and a few more super helpful male members, we started off the brewday milling 70lbs of grain (so much grain dust!) And in the chocolatey bread smelling grain went into the 150 degree mash water with our signature drill powered auger for 60 minutes.
As we waited for the grain sugars to extract & convert, our monthly member meeting was going on inside the club house (ahhhh, air conditioning!) John Aitchison presented a nicely procured line up of Lady Owned/Lady Brewed beers (staying with the day’s theme, naturally.) These brews included Three Weaver’s (collab with Pink Boots) “Anything You Can Brew, I Can Brew Better” Pale Ale, Naughty Pine’s “Sturdy-B” Pilsner & “Nineteen 91” Quad, Eagle Rock Brewery’s “Solidarity”, Pedals & Pint’s (collab with Pink Boots) “On Brew Days, We Wear Pink” IPL, and Delirium Tremens’s “Deliria” Belgian Ale (specially brewed once a year to mark International Women’s Day.)
On to the boil! It took a while to get a nice roiling one, but once the wort was bubbling away, the air smelled of roasty toasty chocolate. In goes 6.3oz of Cascade (5.5% alpha) as our bittering 60 minute hop addition, then 5oz of Willamette (6.2% alpha) at 15 minutes for some extra flavor & aroma (this is an American style brown ale, after all). With the ground water coming out of the hose at about 85 degrees, cooling the wort took a bit longer than usual but eventually got to a temperature that was ok to transfer into each of our 7 carboys to then oxygenate. Each brewer decided to select a yeast of their own preference to pitch and adjuncts to add (or not) at kegging. Here is a report of what each brewer’s specs and how they handled fermentation:
Kathy Fairbrother
“I used American Ale Wyeast 1056 smack pak. Added a vodka tincture of toasted & raw coconut and a 3oz. tincture of vanilla bean. Fermented in a Brew Jacket at 65 degrees, the yeast took off fast then slowed down & quit after 3 days. Final gravity: 1.022. It has a wonderful slightly vanilla/coconut aroma, light body and easy to drink: 4.8% abv.”
Abby Piña
“I used the Wyeast 1056, final gravity was 1.008, fermenting temp was about 74 (fluctuated a bit between day & night since I’m using a water bath with a fan.) The beer came out clear with a nice rich brown color, flavor was nutty & chocolatey, the hop flavor being light. I didn’t add anything to it, I just wanted to see how the base beer would be since it’s my first time doing a brown ale 😊“
Jenna Bonney
“I used WLP002 English Ale yeast that seemed to ferment very well, and is now being kept cold until I can keg it…”
(More info to come…)
Tiffany Ashrafi
“I fermented with Wyeast 1056 which went absolutely nutzo for 3 days, exploding foamy yeasty beer everywhere in my office. My Brew Jacket decided to crap out on me so I had to resort to the old fashioned way of climate control: a big blue tub filled half way with water & ice packs. Temperature ranged from 60 – 75, drying out to a crisp 1.006. I added 4oz of grade A amber maple syrup, 16oz of cold brewed coffee (filtered water, fresh ground dark and light roasted coffee beans from Kanza, cold conditioned in fridge for 6 hours), and 3 tsp of cinnamon stick tincture to the beer at kegging. The beer is very clean, light bodied, medium pine & floral bitterness, roasty and very easy to drink (a little too easy, maybe).”
Fallon Roberts (& Quinlan Ginsberg)
Report TBD
Ilan Grossberg (club share)
Report TBD
Sarah Peters (& Taylor Haynes)
They used Saf 05 yeast & reported FG is 6 Brix (or 1.023), fermenting at room temperature (about 72 degrees). “It’s got a piney bitterness up front that quickly resolves to a woody/nut flavor. Very clean fermentation. Really really good!” Their plan is to add a coconut tincture to their beer during bottling, with preparations shown in the pictures below. They did a pressure transfer to prevent oxidation.
