The Grither

When we first started making beer, like everyone else our number one concern was the process.  Of course we wanted to make great beer, but pragmatism took charge.  If the beers were palatable, we'd be pleased.  Also like almost everyone, we started out on the stove.  This means partial mash recipes.

Partial mash means we replace the base malt with a syrup made from the same final product.  Instead of extracting the sugar from the grain, we bought the finished product to make beer.  We did use some grain that was steeped like tea and added our own touch to these recipes.

Grain volume, hopping and yeast were still ours to add and we did achieve reasonable beers, but nothing up to our personal standards.  Much of this was experimentation to learn what certain ingredients added to the final result.  Trial and error makes for a reasonable substitute for formal training in our case.


One of our favorite beers was and still is, Hair of the Dog's Adam.   Adam is an Old World style ale.  It's incredibly rich, tastes like a leather couch and pairs equally with hearty smoked meats as it would with a cigar.  Naturally, we wanted to at least attempt to produce something similar.  For our level and on a stove, this is a big recipe.

The first recipe in 2007:
10 lbs. Amber malt extract

2.0 lbs. Munich malts

1.0 lbs. Brown malts

1.0 lbs. 70-80 Crystal malts

0.5 lbs. Cara Munich

0.5 lbs. Barley flakes

Mash:  60 min at 155 degrees

Hops:

1.0 oz Summit at 60 min

1.0 oz Simcoe at 30 min

1.0 oz Amarillo at 10 min

1.0 oz Northern Brewers at 5 min

1.0 oz Cascade at EOB

Yeast:  Dry English

Once this made it to the bottle, we waited a month or so and the result was hideous.  Yes, we were comparing this to one of our all time favorites, but we were having trouble comparing it to something we could even judge as drinkable at all.  Considering the time and volume of ingredients, we were certainly disappointed.  It was doomed to be ignored in a closet.

In need of bottles about a year later, we planned to dump these now dusty bottles to make room for new stuff.  Of course we wanted to know what a year old home-brew tasted like.  In short, it was awesome.  Even better, it had the characteristics of our target, Adam.  We started unleashing it on guests in small doses and the feedback was excellent all around.  This experiment needed a name.

That year, we attended an event at the wonderful SF SketchFest.  One of the best acts we saw was a barely known couple of kids from Seattle that did their entire act around being 16 and having moved to the city to get away from their parents.  One of the insecurities amplified was in the form of a boogeyman-ish monster called the "Grither".  The Grither was a creature that appeared if you said its name 20 times.  It's a little excessive, but that's the comedic aspect since there is a bit more conscious effort to invoke his arrival and resulting unpleasantness that surely the Grither brings.  It was never clear what the Grither was and when it finally did make a stage appearance, it was a wolf wearing a suit, which makes perfect sense.  We decided we had an amped-up confusing beer that had the elegance of age behind it.  Behold the Grither.

Two more versions of the Grither followed.  Our last Partial Mash beer was the Grither and we still have a few of these left.  Naturally when we moved to all-grain, it was one of the first that we wanted to create.  That recipe is as follows and this November 2nd will be exactly one year since it was brewed.

14 lbs. English 2-row

2.0 lbs. Munich malt

1.0 lbs. Brown malt

1.0 lbs. 70-80 Crystal malt

0.5 lbs. Cara Munich

0.5 lbs. Barley flakes

Mash at 160 for 60 min

Hops (somehow we got from 5 oz to 7 oz):

1.0 oz Summit at 70 min

1.0 oz Northern Brewers at 60 min

1.0 oz Summit at 30 min

1.0 oz Cascade at 10 min

1.0 oz Northern Brewers at 5 min

2.0 oz Cascade at EOB

Yeast:  Dry English which is suitable for the larger Original Gravity beers w/o having to use a starter.

OG:  1.081

FG:  1.01

Tasting notes coming soon.