brew date: 11/5/10
8.5 lbs. british 2 row
3 oz. black malt (500-600L)
1.25 oz. kent golding 4.9 %, 60 minutes
pitch onto yeast cake of 60/-
mashed @ about 152 or 3 for 60 minutes
pre-boil volume: 7.5 gallons
pre-boil gravity: 1.036
OG: 1.047
FG: 1.011
if you are paying attention, you will see that my preboil gravity of the 60/- and this beer are almost the same. only a point off. the reason? two words: grain mill setting. wait- that's three. whatever. this batch, since i was brewing by myself, required that i mill my grain at the LHBS. the grain mill there is set to a much coarser crush than the friend whose mill i usually use. thus, the wort i lautered this time around had less dissolved sugar than what i would get if i was using my buddy's mill. definitely a great real world example of the importance of having the right width setting on your grain mill. the reason i suspect this to be the reason instead of a mashing issue or something like that, is that when at the LBHS i immediately noticed the difference in the crush of the malt. the LBHS mill produced a markedly coarser grind.
lucky for me, a low gravity reading preboil isnt the end of the world. basically, all you do is just extend the boil time, maybe the boil intensity too, and this way you have a greater evaporation rate, which in turn will make your OG closer to where you want it. not very accurate by any means, but for all intensive purposes, it works. that being said though this method would not be ideal for all beer styles. BUT being that traditionally scottish ales have a longer boil to develop the flavor of the beer, this fix worked just fine.
good thing. right around the time i was making this beer, in the las vegas weekly, i had read a most horrible article about homebrewing. in it, among other horrifying details was a guy bragging about how he had forgot hops and how the beer had still turned out great. i was completely disgusted and almost complained about it, but i kept my mouth shut. then what do i do while making this 70/-? yeah, that's right i forgot the hops. but only for an hour. so i ended up with a full 120 minute boil. that'll teach me to get all high and mighty. but like i said, it was appropriate for the style, so it all worked out.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
scottish light 60/-
brew date: 10/23/10
recipe
7.5 lbs. british 2 row
3.25 oz. black malt (500-600L)
1 oz. uk kent golding 4.9%, 60 minutes
wyeast 1728 scottish 2 pint starter
mash 140 15 min.
brought temp up to 154, 45 minutes
pre-boil volume 6.5 gal.
pre-boil gravity: 1.037
OG: 1.043
FG: 1.011
i havent had the pleasure of ever drinking any scottish ales. mostly because there arent really any commercial varieties readily available to consumers in the US- at least to my knowledge. please, correct me if i'm wrong. what i found out from brewing this recipe (the lowest quality of scottish ales) is that scottish ales really are a very light beer. they are not heavy at all. the malt character has traditionally been developed by extending the boil, thus furthering the the development of melanoidins in the malt and producing what is described by the style guidelines as "toffy like," "carmally" or "slick."
not really having any idea how efficient my system is, and as such having not a clue what so ever as to how to tweak my recipes to account for efficiencies, my gravities for this beer were seriously off- as in WAY too high. this being america, the palates that experience this beer probably wont mind too much. especially if served a little warmer, with relatively low carbonation, as is the tradition over there across the pond anyway. that being said, if served too cold and too carbonated, the beer will come across as thin and tasteless. there just isnt a whole lot going on in it. as you can see, the recipe is VERY simple.
according to the style guidelines, my OG should have fallen somewhere in the 30-35 range. it ended up at 43. this is in the range of a scottish export (80/-) which is noted to be between 40 and 54, lots of room for interpretation.
the yeast strain (wyeast 1728) is highly flocculent. my beer is crystal clear and has a nice reddish brown hue with a thin head that quickly disapates, while the lacing around the side of the glass persists.
recipe
7.5 lbs. british 2 row
3.25 oz. black malt (500-600L)
1 oz. uk kent golding 4.9%, 60 minutes
wyeast 1728 scottish 2 pint starter
mash 140 15 min.
brought temp up to 154, 45 minutes
pre-boil volume 6.5 gal.
pre-boil gravity: 1.037
OG: 1.043
FG: 1.011
i havent had the pleasure of ever drinking any scottish ales. mostly because there arent really any commercial varieties readily available to consumers in the US- at least to my knowledge. please, correct me if i'm wrong. what i found out from brewing this recipe (the lowest quality of scottish ales) is that scottish ales really are a very light beer. they are not heavy at all. the malt character has traditionally been developed by extending the boil, thus furthering the the development of melanoidins in the malt and producing what is described by the style guidelines as "toffy like," "carmally" or "slick."
not really having any idea how efficient my system is, and as such having not a clue what so ever as to how to tweak my recipes to account for efficiencies, my gravities for this beer were seriously off- as in WAY too high. this being america, the palates that experience this beer probably wont mind too much. especially if served a little warmer, with relatively low carbonation, as is the tradition over there across the pond anyway. that being said, if served too cold and too carbonated, the beer will come across as thin and tasteless. there just isnt a whole lot going on in it. as you can see, the recipe is VERY simple.
according to the style guidelines, my OG should have fallen somewhere in the 30-35 range. it ended up at 43. this is in the range of a scottish export (80/-) which is noted to be between 40 and 54, lots of room for interpretation.
the yeast strain (wyeast 1728) is highly flocculent. my beer is crystal clear and has a nice reddish brown hue with a thin head that quickly disapates, while the lacing around the side of the glass persists.
Friday, October 01, 2010
lucky number thirteen irish red ale
batch number thirteen, and what happens? the power went out in my building, for no apparent reason. for some other reason i also thought it would be a good idea to start drinking while i was waiting for my water to come to temp. usually, if at all, i at least wait to start drinking until the wort has been lautered. less time for me to become a slobbering, depraved mess.
i awoke the next day, foggy and a little worse for wear. the apartment was a mess. nothing was put away. somehow, the yeast had been pitched to the wort and was beginning to attenuate nicely. looking over my notes i realized i failed to record the OG. luckily, i have started to accumulate a pretty good record of figures. with some detective work, i believe i will at least be able to make an educated guess. lets go, follow me.
i did record the pre-boil gravity at 1.058. in the last batch i brewed, the ESB, my base grain bill of 12 lbs. came in with a pre-boil gravity of 1.052. this batch, only had a base grain bill of 11 lbs. and the pre-boil gravity reading came in 6 points higher with a whole pound less. my efficiency has sky rocketed. i believe this has to do with a modification in my lautering process. it is a hybrid of a batch and continuous sparge.
after the wort is draining at the correct speed (approximately one gal/min), i replace each gallon of wort lautered with a fresh gallon of hot water back on top of the lautering wort. this gives me four or five minutes to do whatever needs to be done in between gallons (in this case, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes at a furious pace) of lautered wort. this prevents me from having to hover over the mash ton trying to keep an inch of liquid over the grain bed. since i do not have a sparge arm set-up, this method seems to be one that works quite well. and considering the significant jump in efficiency witnessed by using this method, i believe i'm on the right track. as long as i keep the fresh water i add on top to replace the volume of the lautered wort at or around 168ish, i shouldn't have to worry about drawing any tannins off the husks or the mash becoming too viscous because it starts to cool down.
as i mentioned before, the ESB had a lower pre-boil gravity, with a larger amount of grain. the OG ended up being 1.060, not too shabby. this being the case, i am going to make an educated guess and conservatively estimate my OG for lucky number thirteen at 1.070. i still haven't learned how to calculate my efficiency, but i will in these next few batches. i have a feeling with this new hybrid sparge method i am going to continue to use, efficiency is going to be pretty good. the real test of improvement will come when i adjust my grain bills for my new efficiency percentage and compare the next vertical series i am going to brew, the scottish shillings, to the old efficiency i was getting with the english bitters vertical series. is anyone else rabid with excitement?
lucky number 13 irish red
11 lbs muntons pale
6 oz. caramel 40L
6 oz. caramel 120L
4 oz. chocolate 375-450L
mash @ 151, 60 min.
mash out @ 168, 10 min.
pre-boil gravity: 1.058
OG: ?? (1.070)
FG: not done fermenting yet
uk kent golding (4.9%), 2 oz, 60 min.
note about the hops:
the hops i acquired are from last years harvest. also considering their slightly lower alpha acid levels than i normally brew with, as well as my suspected spike in gravity levels, i went ahead and bumped up my hop addition to a full two oz rather than palmer and zainasheff's suggested 1.25 oz.
Wyeast 1084 irish ale, 1 pint starter, ferment at 64 degrees
something that i haven't mentioned yet, but that i was thinking about when the power was off, is people learned how to make beer without electricity or power. people made beer for a looong time without power or electricity. i think it would be cool to make beer without these things. just having the power out for three hours while i was trying to brew made me really think about the things we take for granted- like the resources that allow us to do amazing things with relatively little expenditure of personal effort. i really hope us human can get our shit together.
i awoke the next day, foggy and a little worse for wear. the apartment was a mess. nothing was put away. somehow, the yeast had been pitched to the wort and was beginning to attenuate nicely. looking over my notes i realized i failed to record the OG. luckily, i have started to accumulate a pretty good record of figures. with some detective work, i believe i will at least be able to make an educated guess. lets go, follow me.
i did record the pre-boil gravity at 1.058. in the last batch i brewed, the ESB, my base grain bill of 12 lbs. came in with a pre-boil gravity of 1.052. this batch, only had a base grain bill of 11 lbs. and the pre-boil gravity reading came in 6 points higher with a whole pound less. my efficiency has sky rocketed. i believe this has to do with a modification in my lautering process. it is a hybrid of a batch and continuous sparge.
after the wort is draining at the correct speed (approximately one gal/min), i replace each gallon of wort lautered with a fresh gallon of hot water back on top of the lautering wort. this gives me four or five minutes to do whatever needs to be done in between gallons (in this case, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes at a furious pace) of lautered wort. this prevents me from having to hover over the mash ton trying to keep an inch of liquid over the grain bed. since i do not have a sparge arm set-up, this method seems to be one that works quite well. and considering the significant jump in efficiency witnessed by using this method, i believe i'm on the right track. as long as i keep the fresh water i add on top to replace the volume of the lautered wort at or around 168ish, i shouldn't have to worry about drawing any tannins off the husks or the mash becoming too viscous because it starts to cool down.
as i mentioned before, the ESB had a lower pre-boil gravity, with a larger amount of grain. the OG ended up being 1.060, not too shabby. this being the case, i am going to make an educated guess and conservatively estimate my OG for lucky number thirteen at 1.070. i still haven't learned how to calculate my efficiency, but i will in these next few batches. i have a feeling with this new hybrid sparge method i am going to continue to use, efficiency is going to be pretty good. the real test of improvement will come when i adjust my grain bills for my new efficiency percentage and compare the next vertical series i am going to brew, the scottish shillings, to the old efficiency i was getting with the english bitters vertical series. is anyone else rabid with excitement?
lucky number 13 irish red
11 lbs muntons pale
6 oz. caramel 40L
6 oz. caramel 120L
4 oz. chocolate 375-450L
mash @ 151, 60 min.
mash out @ 168, 10 min.
pre-boil gravity: 1.058
OG: ?? (1.070)
FG: not done fermenting yet
uk kent golding (4.9%), 2 oz, 60 min.
note about the hops:
the hops i acquired are from last years harvest. also considering their slightly lower alpha acid levels than i normally brew with, as well as my suspected spike in gravity levels, i went ahead and bumped up my hop addition to a full two oz rather than palmer and zainasheff's suggested 1.25 oz.
Wyeast 1084 irish ale, 1 pint starter, ferment at 64 degrees
something that i haven't mentioned yet, but that i was thinking about when the power was off, is people learned how to make beer without electricity or power. people made beer for a looong time without power or electricity. i think it would be cool to make beer without these things. just having the power out for three hours while i was trying to brew made me really think about the things we take for granted- like the resources that allow us to do amazing things with relatively little expenditure of personal effort. i really hope us human can get our shit together.
extra special/strong bitter (ESB)
after talking with my professional brewer friend there a couple things i will begin to take not of now in this journal that i haven't before. the first one will be fermentation temp. recording this will give me a better frame of reference when criticizing how my beer tastes. it will also give me better insight into apparent attenuation. making sure to record fermentation temperatures gives me another control by which to better evaluate my beer making ventures.
the second thing i will begin to record (which i think i have been intermittently on here) is OG (original gravity) and FG (final gravity). these two readings also help me calculate apparent attenuation, as well as alcohol content, and coupled with the fermentation temp readings will give you, the reader, a better understanding of what happened with these brewing attempts.
i finished out this verticle series of bitters with an ESB. if anyone has ever had Fuller's ESB, this is pretty much the standard that everyone compares all other ESB's, but i think that is more because that is mainly what is available here in the states. English style pale ales are not very popular here, and as such, i dont think people have an appreciation for the wide range afforded by this style (as understood by reading the BJCP style guidelines). i think it would be neat to go to england and drink the stuff they have there. like all beers, the closer you are to the source, the better the beer is going to be.
this bitters recipe just vamped up the two row again. and that's it. i ended up bumping up the special roast, but i didn't need to. i could have left it alone. i think i was just finishing off what i had left.
actually, i take that back. i just noticed i had been bumping up the dark crystal too, starting with the premium batch. having been doing research into the scottish ales, i realize i probably dont need to mess with the specialty grains at all when brewing a series like the this bitters. really, the only differentiation between the sub-styles is alcohol content and malt back bone, which in turn calls for slight adjustments in the hops boil schedule. but other than that, any other adjustments aren't necessary.
the second edition of hops i bumped up ten minutes to balance the bittering with the increased malt presence. other than that, nothing changed. i pitched onto the yeast cake of the standard and premium batches and fermented at 66 degrees again.
ESB
12 lbs. Muntons Pale
1 lb. Muntons Dark
.375 lb. Domestic Special Roast
after tasting, this bulked up specialty grains bill was definitely not the way to go. too dark in color, and the taste has a bitter chocolaty note that is very forward and out of style. if i would have kept the muntons dark at a half pound and kept the special roast to a quarter lb, this beer would be excellent. is has a nice alcoholic warmth too it, not too overpowering, but there all the same. the specialty grains have over-shadowed the pleasant sweetness of the two row. ah well, we live and we learn, right? maybe i'll pass it off as a an english brown...CHEERS!
single infusion @152, 60 minutes
mash out @168, 10 minutes
1.5 oz kent goldings (5.4%), 60 minutes
.5 oz., 50 minutes
.5 oz., 1 minute (flameout)
a note about the hops: when buying little one oz packets of pelletized hops from brewcraft, what they call an ounce, does not weigh an ounce. in fact, with what brewcraft called 2 ounces, when i weighed the hops, i only had 1.5. in order to make up for this difference, i just put in a half ounce of some old leftover cascade (originally packaged as 7.8 %) and mixed it with my 1.5 oz. of kent golding. this of course kind of ruins my whole "vertical series" thing i had going on. but it couldn't be helped. i had to adapt to my situation. the beauty of brewing. what i did to minimize the shock of a half ounce of a completely different hop in my beer was to just mix it in with all the rest so it was evenly distributed at least. WAH!
preboil gravity: 1.052
OG: 1.060
FG: 1.018
AA (apparent attenuation): 70%
again, this AA figure is a little low. i am wondering how much of it has to do fermentation temp, my mash, and finally, pitching onto the existing yeast cake. maybe when mashing for a series like this, for the second and third batches i should mash a little lower, like 149 or 150 to try and get some more fermentables out of the grain. then maybe i should ferment at a little higher temp, more like 68 degrees instead of 66. these suggestions come from listening to Brew Strong, a podcast on the BrewingNetwork, hosted by John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff.
another thing to remember though, is that when yeasts are stressed, that is what provides esters. so if you want esters restrained you have to make sure the yeast is not stressed out. now does that mean making them warmer or colder? i think warmer, i cant remember...
the second thing i will begin to record (which i think i have been intermittently on here) is OG (original gravity) and FG (final gravity). these two readings also help me calculate apparent attenuation, as well as alcohol content, and coupled with the fermentation temp readings will give you, the reader, a better understanding of what happened with these brewing attempts.
i finished out this verticle series of bitters with an ESB. if anyone has ever had Fuller's ESB, this is pretty much the standard that everyone compares all other ESB's, but i think that is more because that is mainly what is available here in the states. English style pale ales are not very popular here, and as such, i dont think people have an appreciation for the wide range afforded by this style (as understood by reading the BJCP style guidelines). i think it would be neat to go to england and drink the stuff they have there. like all beers, the closer you are to the source, the better the beer is going to be.
this bitters recipe just vamped up the two row again. and that's it. i ended up bumping up the special roast, but i didn't need to. i could have left it alone. i think i was just finishing off what i had left.
actually, i take that back. i just noticed i had been bumping up the dark crystal too, starting with the premium batch. having been doing research into the scottish ales, i realize i probably dont need to mess with the specialty grains at all when brewing a series like the this bitters. really, the only differentiation between the sub-styles is alcohol content and malt back bone, which in turn calls for slight adjustments in the hops boil schedule. but other than that, any other adjustments aren't necessary.
the second edition of hops i bumped up ten minutes to balance the bittering with the increased malt presence. other than that, nothing changed. i pitched onto the yeast cake of the standard and premium batches and fermented at 66 degrees again.
ESB
12 lbs. Muntons Pale
1 lb. Muntons Dark
.375 lb. Domestic Special Roast
after tasting, this bulked up specialty grains bill was definitely not the way to go. too dark in color, and the taste has a bitter chocolaty note that is very forward and out of style. if i would have kept the muntons dark at a half pound and kept the special roast to a quarter lb, this beer would be excellent. is has a nice alcoholic warmth too it, not too overpowering, but there all the same. the specialty grains have over-shadowed the pleasant sweetness of the two row. ah well, we live and we learn, right? maybe i'll pass it off as a an english brown...CHEERS!
single infusion @152, 60 minutes
mash out @168, 10 minutes
1.5 oz kent goldings (5.4%), 60 minutes
.5 oz., 50 minutes
.5 oz., 1 minute (flameout)
a note about the hops: when buying little one oz packets of pelletized hops from brewcraft, what they call an ounce, does not weigh an ounce. in fact, with what brewcraft called 2 ounces, when i weighed the hops, i only had 1.5. in order to make up for this difference, i just put in a half ounce of some old leftover cascade (originally packaged as 7.8 %) and mixed it with my 1.5 oz. of kent golding. this of course kind of ruins my whole "vertical series" thing i had going on. but it couldn't be helped. i had to adapt to my situation. the beauty of brewing. what i did to minimize the shock of a half ounce of a completely different hop in my beer was to just mix it in with all the rest so it was evenly distributed at least. WAH!
preboil gravity: 1.052
OG: 1.060
FG: 1.018
AA (apparent attenuation): 70%
again, this AA figure is a little low. i am wondering how much of it has to do fermentation temp, my mash, and finally, pitching onto the existing yeast cake. maybe when mashing for a series like this, for the second and third batches i should mash a little lower, like 149 or 150 to try and get some more fermentables out of the grain. then maybe i should ferment at a little higher temp, more like 68 degrees instead of 66. these suggestions come from listening to Brew Strong, a podcast on the BrewingNetwork, hosted by John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff.
another thing to remember though, is that when yeasts are stressed, that is what provides esters. so if you want esters restrained you have to make sure the yeast is not stressed out. now does that mean making them warmer or colder? i think warmer, i cant remember...
Saturday, August 07, 2010
special/best/premium bitter
mash schedule
10 lbs. muntons pale (2 row)
.75 lb. muntons dark crystal (125-165 L)
.25 lb. domestic special roast (50 L)
single infusion @ 152 for 60 min.
mash out @ 168 for 10 min.
boil schedule
kent golding (5.4%), 1.5 oz...... 60 min.
.5 oz...... 40 min.
.5 oz..........1 min.
yeast
pitching onto yeast cake of standard/ordinary bitter, 66 degrees
with the increase of yeast produced by the fermentation of the standard/ordinary bitter, i am confident that this will back up the increased sugars in this next brew caused by the increase in volume of 2 row malt. given my sanitation is sufficient, pitching the wort of the special/best/premium onto the finished beer's standard/ordinary yeast cake will be advantagous. as the sugar profiles of both beers are similiar, as well as the temperature at pitching, the yeast will not have to work very hard to adjust to the new conditions. primary fermentation should happen quickly and vigourously.
brewer's notes: although the standard bitter fermented down just into its style range, this special/best/premium did not attenuate quite enough. it was a couple points off. i dont know if this is an effect of re-using my yeast or not. would re-using yeast effect the attenuation percentage negatively?
the wind is your enemy
i need a better thermometer
10 lbs. muntons pale (2 row)
.75 lb. muntons dark crystal (125-165 L)
.25 lb. domestic special roast (50 L)
single infusion @ 152 for 60 min.
mash out @ 168 for 10 min.
boil schedule
kent golding (5.4%), 1.5 oz...... 60 min.
.5 oz...... 40 min.
.5 oz..........1 min.
yeast
pitching onto yeast cake of standard/ordinary bitter, 66 degrees
with the increase of yeast produced by the fermentation of the standard/ordinary bitter, i am confident that this will back up the increased sugars in this next brew caused by the increase in volume of 2 row malt. given my sanitation is sufficient, pitching the wort of the special/best/premium onto the finished beer's standard/ordinary yeast cake will be advantagous. as the sugar profiles of both beers are similiar, as well as the temperature at pitching, the yeast will not have to work very hard to adjust to the new conditions. primary fermentation should happen quickly and vigourously.
brewer's notes: although the standard bitter fermented down just into its style range, this special/best/premium did not attenuate quite enough. it was a couple points off. i dont know if this is an effect of re-using my yeast or not. would re-using yeast effect the attenuation percentage negatively?
the wind is your enemy
i need a better thermometer
Friday, July 09, 2010
english ipa and standard bitter
it is fitting i brewed the English India pale ale on July third, the day before the united states celebrates its independence from the British empire; and, also fitting, being that you cant have one without the other, this recipe is a hybrid of sorts.
i had some domestic two row and domestic crystal left from previous batches that i needed to use up. researching the make-up of true English ipa's, i realized that with this batch i would have a perfect opportunity to substitute my leftovers. the resulting recipe looks like this:
independence day English India pale ale
Grain Bill:
2.72 kg Muntons Maris Otter
3.5 lbs. Domestic Two Row
0.23 kg Muntons Dark Crystal
0.5 lbs. Domestic Crystal
0.45 kg Belgian Biscuit/Amber
Hops:
28.34 g UK Northern Brewer (Northdown), 60 min.
28.34 g UK Northern Brewer (Northdown), 30 min.
1.0 oz. Willamette, 15 min.
1.0 oz. Willamette, flame-out
(in the spirit of the hybrid recipe, i chose an American hops with a profile similar to that of its British counterpart)
Yeast:
1028 London (WYeast)
Mash:
i decided to do an initial mash at 115 for a half hour or so. when i measured the temperature right before the second infusion to bring the mash up to 152, i noticed that the mash was at 125. so i was about ten degrees too high. i am going to make an educated guess and say that whatever temp i rested at probably made more of a difference than if i hadn't done any rest at all, and so i am not going to beat myself up over missing the temp. really, i dont even know what resting at 115 would do to the mash anyway. that is a whole other lesson in chemistry i haven't begun to delve into yet. i think i just liked the idea of a "protein rest." somewhere in the back of my head i think i am getting a transmission that says, "this will help head retention and fullness of body." i could be WAAAY off, dont quote me on that.
anyway, i hit my 152 right on the nose and let it go for another half hour. i bumped it up to 170, let it hang for a couple minutes, and then mashed out. which brings me to the next hurdle, one i have been dealing with the last couple of brews: the stuck mash.
Additional Notes:
ah, stuck mash, how do i hate thee? let me count the ways. you know, at first i thought that it was the weight of the grains smashing the tube that led from the stainless steel bottom to the ball valve. the first stuck mash happened when i was just about busting the seems of my five gallon mash tun with my 12 lb. Belgian pale ale grain bill. the tubing connecting the false bottom and the valve was flimsy clear acrylic tubing. maybe with the heat of the mash, the tubing got soft and just collapsed on itself.
i changed out the tubing. i replaced it with some beefy, heat resistant tubing. there, i thought, that'll work. but it didn't. the next go-round i decided to do my first stepped mash. this time around, a blonde ale with a relatively light grain bill compared to the BPA before it, still had me pulling my hair out over the infamous stuck mash. i thought, now, with the collapsed tubing theory out of the way, maybe with the stepped mash, i had too much water. maybe the grains were settling out too quickly, preventing the mash from flowing as it should. next time i would make the adjustment. and i did.
with the brown porter i thought i had it down. i had fixed the tubing, and now i had lessened the water to grain ratio in the initial mash infusion. i was good to go. there is always a moment when a brewer starts lautering the wort, when he's looking for that first sign of a healthy run-off, where the brewer holds his breath, hoping everything is going to go fine. The brewer knows what can go wrong. it has happened to him. through trial and error he has learned how to avoid such hang-ups, but there is always that initial apprehension, that holding of breath, that whisper of prayer. c'mon, PLEEEAASE work. when and if, through skill, experience, luck, or maybe a combination of all three, the wort starts flowing as it should, the brewer sighs in relief. the hard part is over.
such an amalgamation of factors was still alluding me. i began to grow suspicious...suspicious of what? one might ask. suspicious of my equipment, that's what. i think i had been on to something with grist/water ratios and weak tubing theories. These were both perfectly good explanations of my stuck mash problem; but not if the fix i'd implemented hadn't worked. something was not adding up. i had a rat in the midst of things and the time had come to flush it out.
between the Belgian and the blonde batches, i had upgraded my mash system from my usual five gallon to a ten gallon igloo. however, i had not changed the stainless steel false bottom. I was beginning to think that this could be the cause of my problems.
The false bottom i had purchased was made specifically for a five gallon igloo with a diameter of 9". It fit neatly in the bottom with about a 1/4 " of play all around the bottom of the cooler. With the up grade to the ten gallon cooler, this 1/4" of tolerance around the walls was increased to about an inch and a half. Where before, the five gallon cooler, and the false bottom didn't have much room to move, now it was free to vacillate up to almost three inches.
i had debated in my mind whether or not this change was a good idea. i had consulted beer advocate on the issue, which was not much help. my thinking was that even though the surface area of the false bottom of the old tun compared to the actual surface area of the new, bigger mash tun would be substantially increased (going from the 5 gallon to the 10 gallon mash tun), the design and function of the 9" false bottom would remain intact. a brewer buddy of mine had taken the step ahead of me and told me it worked fine. he was wrong.
When mashing grain, it is necessary to stir the mixture, not often, but intermittently. It distributes the heat of the hot water added. when adding water during infusions, it is necessary to stir the grain to redistribute the heat of the water, bringing up the temperature without hot spots. with the freedom of movement provided the 9" false bottom, designed for a five gallon igloo mash tun, by the increased area of the bottom of the 10 gallon mash tun, it is my hypothesis that this allowed the false bottom too much freedom of movement. although an increase in water to grain ratio and a structurally unsound pathway for liquid to travel through between the false bottom and the ball valve of my system may have been factors that led to a stuck mash, i have surmised that the root cause of the problem lies in the extra area of movement the ten gallon mash tun affords the nine inch false bottom (being designed for a five gallon tun) to move.
this hypothesis was backed by the next batch i brewed, a standard/ordinary bitter (english pale ale). ordinary bitters are a relatively malt balanced beer (as are all english pale ales) with a sessionable ABV of 3.3-3.8% . This differs from the american style in that the hop bitterness and aroma are more subdued in the british version than is celebrated and exagerated by its american counterpart. american pale ales also tend to overshadow the British style in their ABV of 4.5-6.2%.
that being said, the standard/ordinary bitters recipe i brewed had a significantly reduced grain bill. as such, the grist in lbs./water in qts. ratio was subdued, as was the pressure upon the tube connecting the underneath of the false bottom and the ball valve (although this problem was already alleviated by my addition of a stronger tube) by a heavy grain bill. the only remaining factor was the lessened movement of the mash, because of a reduced need to stir the mash, as a direct result of infusions that weren't needed, as a single infusion mash was utilized. because of this decreased movement, there was less chance for the 9" false bottom to move about in the enlarged area of the new ten gallon mash tun.
i have concluded, by not experiencing a stuck mash with the standard/ordinary bitter recipe, that i need to procure a 12" stainless steel false bottom if i am to continue using my ten gallon igloo mash tun. the 12" stainless steel bottom, designed specifically for a ten gallon igloo thermos, will alleviate the movement i have experienced that causes a stuck mash. a 12" diameter false bottom will restore any movement back to within a 1/4" deviation from center; this will return my system to the balance i enjoyed previous to upgrading my system from a five to ten gallon tun.
this is done easily enough for the fee of $60-70. Which brings me to the conclusion that i need to only deal with single infusions for the time being. this past brew i enacted is proof positive. until i am able to enjoy the benefits of the 12" false bottom, i think i will give up the multiple benefits of a multiple infusion. when that book by Zainasheff and Palmer calls for a 60 minute mash at 150, i will adhere by it. no more are the multiple infusion mashes. i dont understand them anyway. i dont know what temperature makes what scientific fraggle rock magical occurrence, so i will just stop.
Standard/Ordinary Bitter (1st in a series of three)
Grain Bill:
8 lbs. Muntons Pale
.5 lbs Muntons Dark Crystal
.25 lbs. Domestic Special Roast
Single Infusion @ 152 for 60 min.
Mash Out @ 168 for 10 min.
Hops:
Kent Golding
1.5 oz., 60 min.
0.5 oz., 30 min.
0.5 oz., 1 min.
Yeast:
1968 London ESB (WYeast), ferment @ 66
i had some domestic two row and domestic crystal left from previous batches that i needed to use up. researching the make-up of true English ipa's, i realized that with this batch i would have a perfect opportunity to substitute my leftovers. the resulting recipe looks like this:
independence day English India pale ale
Grain Bill:
2.72 kg Muntons Maris Otter
3.5 lbs. Domestic Two Row
0.23 kg Muntons Dark Crystal
0.5 lbs. Domestic Crystal
0.45 kg Belgian Biscuit/Amber
Hops:
28.34 g UK Northern Brewer (Northdown), 60 min.
28.34 g UK Northern Brewer (Northdown), 30 min.
1.0 oz. Willamette, 15 min.
1.0 oz. Willamette, flame-out
(in the spirit of the hybrid recipe, i chose an American hops with a profile similar to that of its British counterpart)
Yeast:
1028 London (WYeast)
Mash:
i decided to do an initial mash at 115 for a half hour or so. when i measured the temperature right before the second infusion to bring the mash up to 152, i noticed that the mash was at 125. so i was about ten degrees too high. i am going to make an educated guess and say that whatever temp i rested at probably made more of a difference than if i hadn't done any rest at all, and so i am not going to beat myself up over missing the temp. really, i dont even know what resting at 115 would do to the mash anyway. that is a whole other lesson in chemistry i haven't begun to delve into yet. i think i just liked the idea of a "protein rest." somewhere in the back of my head i think i am getting a transmission that says, "this will help head retention and fullness of body." i could be WAAAY off, dont quote me on that.
anyway, i hit my 152 right on the nose and let it go for another half hour. i bumped it up to 170, let it hang for a couple minutes, and then mashed out. which brings me to the next hurdle, one i have been dealing with the last couple of brews: the stuck mash.
Additional Notes:
ah, stuck mash, how do i hate thee? let me count the ways. you know, at first i thought that it was the weight of the grains smashing the tube that led from the stainless steel bottom to the ball valve. the first stuck mash happened when i was just about busting the seems of my five gallon mash tun with my 12 lb. Belgian pale ale grain bill. the tubing connecting the false bottom and the valve was flimsy clear acrylic tubing. maybe with the heat of the mash, the tubing got soft and just collapsed on itself.
i changed out the tubing. i replaced it with some beefy, heat resistant tubing. there, i thought, that'll work. but it didn't. the next go-round i decided to do my first stepped mash. this time around, a blonde ale with a relatively light grain bill compared to the BPA before it, still had me pulling my hair out over the infamous stuck mash. i thought, now, with the collapsed tubing theory out of the way, maybe with the stepped mash, i had too much water. maybe the grains were settling out too quickly, preventing the mash from flowing as it should. next time i would make the adjustment. and i did.
with the brown porter i thought i had it down. i had fixed the tubing, and now i had lessened the water to grain ratio in the initial mash infusion. i was good to go. there is always a moment when a brewer starts lautering the wort, when he's looking for that first sign of a healthy run-off, where the brewer holds his breath, hoping everything is going to go fine. The brewer knows what can go wrong. it has happened to him. through trial and error he has learned how to avoid such hang-ups, but there is always that initial apprehension, that holding of breath, that whisper of prayer. c'mon, PLEEEAASE work. when and if, through skill, experience, luck, or maybe a combination of all three, the wort starts flowing as it should, the brewer sighs in relief. the hard part is over.
such an amalgamation of factors was still alluding me. i began to grow suspicious...suspicious of what? one might ask. suspicious of my equipment, that's what. i think i had been on to something with grist/water ratios and weak tubing theories. These were both perfectly good explanations of my stuck mash problem; but not if the fix i'd implemented hadn't worked. something was not adding up. i had a rat in the midst of things and the time had come to flush it out.
between the Belgian and the blonde batches, i had upgraded my mash system from my usual five gallon to a ten gallon igloo. however, i had not changed the stainless steel false bottom. I was beginning to think that this could be the cause of my problems.
The false bottom i had purchased was made specifically for a five gallon igloo with a diameter of 9". It fit neatly in the bottom with about a 1/4 " of play all around the bottom of the cooler. With the up grade to the ten gallon cooler, this 1/4" of tolerance around the walls was increased to about an inch and a half. Where before, the five gallon cooler, and the false bottom didn't have much room to move, now it was free to vacillate up to almost three inches.
i had debated in my mind whether or not this change was a good idea. i had consulted beer advocate on the issue, which was not much help. my thinking was that even though the surface area of the false bottom of the old tun compared to the actual surface area of the new, bigger mash tun would be substantially increased (going from the 5 gallon to the 10 gallon mash tun), the design and function of the 9" false bottom would remain intact. a brewer buddy of mine had taken the step ahead of me and told me it worked fine. he was wrong.
When mashing grain, it is necessary to stir the mixture, not often, but intermittently. It distributes the heat of the hot water added. when adding water during infusions, it is necessary to stir the grain to redistribute the heat of the water, bringing up the temperature without hot spots. with the freedom of movement provided the 9" false bottom, designed for a five gallon igloo mash tun, by the increased area of the bottom of the 10 gallon mash tun, it is my hypothesis that this allowed the false bottom too much freedom of movement. although an increase in water to grain ratio and a structurally unsound pathway for liquid to travel through between the false bottom and the ball valve of my system may have been factors that led to a stuck mash, i have surmised that the root cause of the problem lies in the extra area of movement the ten gallon mash tun affords the nine inch false bottom (being designed for a five gallon tun) to move.
this hypothesis was backed by the next batch i brewed, a standard/ordinary bitter (english pale ale). ordinary bitters are a relatively malt balanced beer (as are all english pale ales) with a sessionable ABV of 3.3-3.8% . This differs from the american style in that the hop bitterness and aroma are more subdued in the british version than is celebrated and exagerated by its american counterpart. american pale ales also tend to overshadow the British style in their ABV of 4.5-6.2%.
that being said, the standard/ordinary bitters recipe i brewed had a significantly reduced grain bill. as such, the grist in lbs./water in qts. ratio was subdued, as was the pressure upon the tube connecting the underneath of the false bottom and the ball valve (although this problem was already alleviated by my addition of a stronger tube) by a heavy grain bill. the only remaining factor was the lessened movement of the mash, because of a reduced need to stir the mash, as a direct result of infusions that weren't needed, as a single infusion mash was utilized. because of this decreased movement, there was less chance for the 9" false bottom to move about in the enlarged area of the new ten gallon mash tun.
i have concluded, by not experiencing a stuck mash with the standard/ordinary bitter recipe, that i need to procure a 12" stainless steel false bottom if i am to continue using my ten gallon igloo mash tun. the 12" stainless steel bottom, designed specifically for a ten gallon igloo thermos, will alleviate the movement i have experienced that causes a stuck mash. a 12" diameter false bottom will restore any movement back to within a 1/4" deviation from center; this will return my system to the balance i enjoyed previous to upgrading my system from a five to ten gallon tun.
this is done easily enough for the fee of $60-70. Which brings me to the conclusion that i need to only deal with single infusions for the time being. this past brew i enacted is proof positive. until i am able to enjoy the benefits of the 12" false bottom, i think i will give up the multiple benefits of a multiple infusion. when that book by Zainasheff and Palmer calls for a 60 minute mash at 150, i will adhere by it. no more are the multiple infusion mashes. i dont understand them anyway. i dont know what temperature makes what scientific fraggle rock magical occurrence, so i will just stop.
Standard/Ordinary Bitter (1st in a series of three)
Grain Bill:
8 lbs. Muntons Pale
.5 lbs Muntons Dark Crystal
.25 lbs. Domestic Special Roast
Single Infusion @ 152 for 60 min.
Mash Out @ 168 for 10 min.
Hops:
Kent Golding
1.5 oz., 60 min.
0.5 oz., 30 min.
0.5 oz., 1 min.
Yeast:
1968 London ESB (WYeast), ferment @ 66
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
dunkelweizen
so i guess my spelling is atrocious. i was asked if i used spell check, and told i should swallow my pride and figure out how to spell something before just posting it. yeah. well, guess what? english is a living language. pronunciations and spellings change. rules are meant to be broken. and i do use spell check. and it isnt pride holding me back from being a great speller. its mostly laziness.
okay, onto the subject at hand, beer. need i say, "i love it," one more time? probably not, but i will anyway. i love beer.
there are some things that happened between now and the last beer i last brewed, most noteworthy a trip to italia. ahh, a beautiful place. a laid back place where mcdonalds are few and far between. the cashier isnt concerned about getting your change back to you in the shortest amount of time possible. and even though i cant understand her, i know shes not talking about work related issues. yes, i would say italy is incredible, but its not. i have seen it with my own eyes. it exists. it is real.
italy is not a huge beer drinking nation. they love their vino and grappa and apperitifs and digestifs. italy is much too cool to be caught drinking a beer. however, being an american tourist, i ordered beer at every opportunity. i must say, although limited, the selection delighted my senses. nastro azzurro, one of the best lagers i have had, though my experience is limited to budweiser and miller light. nastro azzurro, a smooth, balanced beverage with a hint of that bitterness, endowed by that wonderful plant, humulus lupulus, otherwise known as hops.
another beer i had, http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/252/808, was delecatable. a german, bavarian specifically, beer that did not stop pleasing the palate. it was what i imagined my dunkelweizen would taste like. alas, my brewing prowess did not allow for the presence of these melodic flavors to grace the surface of my tongue. i need some more vienna or munich next time.
once again, my notes fail me. why do i even take them? i started off so well. ingredients, mash schedule, hopping schedule, and then yeast. every time. why i have strayed from this, i will never be able to tell.
i do know this:
one hop addition of 1 oz. of Spaltz pellets at 60 minutes
electrojazz session
solid water
"extended spirit"
Unify
8.75 lbs. total grain bill.
"have begun to research 'decoction' methods of mashing-not quite there yet
i have decided to do a rest (acid) @ 111[degrees Fahrenheit]- this supposedly develops ferulic acid, which in turn produces 4-vinyl guaiacol which is responsable for clove flavor 20 min.
then 150 for 30 min
then 168 (mashout) 10 ish minutes
-1 pint starter
-ferment @ below 65"
this grain bill was ridiculously light. i know that. i was thinking that i needed more room for water, as i would have a three step mash. plus, a hefeweisen isnt supposed to be the most alchoholic beer. now, 2-3 and a half weeks later after bottling, i must say the beer is turning out pretty good. there is a strong banana nose, typical of the yeast strain i used, but there seems to be little to no clove presence as is typical of the style. perhaps the hops is masking this? the beer does have a twinge of bitterness that comes from its youth. this will mellow out in another week or two. maybe there will be some clove there when that happens.
okay, onto the subject at hand, beer. need i say, "i love it," one more time? probably not, but i will anyway. i love beer.
there are some things that happened between now and the last beer i last brewed, most noteworthy a trip to italia. ahh, a beautiful place. a laid back place where mcdonalds are few and far between. the cashier isnt concerned about getting your change back to you in the shortest amount of time possible. and even though i cant understand her, i know shes not talking about work related issues. yes, i would say italy is incredible, but its not. i have seen it with my own eyes. it exists. it is real.
italy is not a huge beer drinking nation. they love their vino and grappa and apperitifs and digestifs. italy is much too cool to be caught drinking a beer. however, being an american tourist, i ordered beer at every opportunity. i must say, although limited, the selection delighted my senses. nastro azzurro, one of the best lagers i have had, though my experience is limited to budweiser and miller light. nastro azzurro, a smooth, balanced beverage with a hint of that bitterness, endowed by that wonderful plant, humulus lupulus, otherwise known as hops.
another beer i had, http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/252/808, was delecatable. a german, bavarian specifically, beer that did not stop pleasing the palate. it was what i imagined my dunkelweizen would taste like. alas, my brewing prowess did not allow for the presence of these melodic flavors to grace the surface of my tongue. i need some more vienna or munich next time.
once again, my notes fail me. why do i even take them? i started off so well. ingredients, mash schedule, hopping schedule, and then yeast. every time. why i have strayed from this, i will never be able to tell.
i do know this:
one hop addition of 1 oz. of Spaltz pellets at 60 minutes
electrojazz session
solid water
"extended spirit"
Unify
8.75 lbs. total grain bill.
"have begun to research 'decoction' methods of mashing-not quite there yet
i have decided to do a rest (acid) @ 111[degrees Fahrenheit]- this supposedly develops ferulic acid, which in turn produces 4-vinyl guaiacol which is responsable for clove flavor 20 min.
then 150 for 30 min
then 168 (mashout) 10 ish minutes
-1 pint starter
-ferment @ below 65"
this grain bill was ridiculously light. i know that. i was thinking that i needed more room for water, as i would have a three step mash. plus, a hefeweisen isnt supposed to be the most alchoholic beer. now, 2-3 and a half weeks later after bottling, i must say the beer is turning out pretty good. there is a strong banana nose, typical of the yeast strain i used, but there seems to be little to no clove presence as is typical of the style. perhaps the hops is masking this? the beer does have a twinge of bitterness that comes from its youth. this will mellow out in another week or two. maybe there will be some clove there when that happens.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
brown porter
had a hell of a time with this one.
ingredients:
muntons pale, 10 lbs.
muntons crystal, 1 lb.
british amber/brown, 1 lb.
muntons chocolate, 9 oz.
fuggles uk, 1 oz plug, 60 min.
.5 oz, 15 min.
.5 oz, 5 minutes
90 minute boil
pre-boil volume: 7.5 gal.
pr3-boil gravity: 1.044
OG: 1.066
FG: 1.018
mash schedule:
.5 hours @ 104
.5 hours @ 140
.5 hours @ 158
degrees Fahrenheit, mind you
on paper it looks simple enough, but from my perspective the scenario played out quite differently. there were a number of pesky hangups with this batch, namely a stuck mash and running out of propane mid boil. which i know now, every four brewing sessions, i need to fill up on propane. brewing beer is not cheap.
every spring it is windy as shit here in vegas. and every spring everyone is like, "fucking wind, man!" due to the fact that i dont have a wind shield for my propane burner, the wind really messes with me. it takes forever to boil anything. to make matters worse, on this morning, i picked up the propane tank and thought geez, that feels a little light. foolishly, i had not given the tank the ol' pick-up-and-see-how heavy it is-test prior. so instead of just going to get more propane right then and there i decided that i had enough and proceeded with the work at hand. do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.
about thirty minutes into the boil, i lost my BTU's. i lugged seven gallons of boiling wort up the steps and into the kitchen. i placed the wort on the stove. my pot is about 1" to tall to fit on my stove. oh yes, i know that now. so i decided to use the front two burners with the kettle hanging off rather precariously. the pot stayed on just fine. but the burners were too widely placed. they were on the outer quarter of the kettle. i turned the back burners on just for the hell of it. the range fan went on automatically. i didnt even know it did that! the boil wasnt coming back. i have a two gallon pot. i filled that up with wort and put it on the burner behind the kettle. i have a one gallon pot. i did the same with that and put it on the other burner behind the pot. i was using the shit out of some natural gas. it was just a waste, a tease.
FINALLY, chessie came home from work. this was about three in the afternoon. i went and got propane. i returned home. i fired up the burner once again. an hour later i was pretty much done.
all this left me rather drained. oh yeah, and i forgot to mention the stuck mash from hell i had. the batch before, i had a stuck mash too, the blonde ale. i had figured it was because the tubing that connected my ball valve to the false bottom was the regular, squishy, clear, vinyl, type. woah, hows that for a string of modifiers? anyway, i had changed the old tubing out before this brown porter batch with the high temp, stiff, cloth braided vinyl type. i thought this stiffer tubing would not get crushed by the weight of the grains when i began to lauter. but begining to lauter again this time, i ran into the same problem. i was able to get a couple quarts, i thought things were going fine and then BAM! stuck mash. it was horrible. i blew into the line, i sucked the line. i jiggled the mash tun, pounded against the sides. if you woulda seen me working that tun you would have been embarassed for me. you'd a thought i was tyrone biggums working the shaft for a ten baggy of crack cocaine!
mental images aside, what i realized is that the problem wasnt so much the tubing(although that could have been part of it) as it was my water to grist ratio. i have been used to keeping my lbs. grain/qts water at a 1/1 ratio. This is fine for single step mashes. The mash at this ratio, in a single infusion is great for lautering. But, when doing a stepped mash, the ratio of water to grain is greatly increased. This increased ratio makes for a much thinner mash. Instead of the grain expanding and getting thick as with a single infusion mash, during a stepped mash, the evolving mash becomes more and more dilute. i have realized that when performing a stepped mash, the amount of water that will be added into the process has to be taken into account. a 1/1 ration is just too much water to start out with. this ratio allows the grain bed to compress with the additions of boiling water to reach the desired temperatures of the steps, instead of staying suspended as with a single infusion. does this make sense? so, the solution is to decrease the ratio of water to grain during the initial infusion, based on the number of steps that will be performed during the mash. that way, the mash will not become too dilute and cause the grain bed to compress upon itself during lautering, thus causing a stuck mash. problem solved.
so other than the stuck mash, running out of propane, and the wind, the brew sesh went fine. i forgot to tell you that the yeast i used was a...no idea. sorry. i must get better at taking notes!
ingredients:
muntons pale, 10 lbs.
muntons crystal, 1 lb.
british amber/brown, 1 lb.
muntons chocolate, 9 oz.
fuggles uk, 1 oz plug, 60 min.
.5 oz, 15 min.
.5 oz, 5 minutes
90 minute boil
pre-boil volume: 7.5 gal.
pr3-boil gravity: 1.044
OG: 1.066
FG: 1.018
mash schedule:
.5 hours @ 104
.5 hours @ 140
.5 hours @ 158
degrees Fahrenheit, mind you
on paper it looks simple enough, but from my perspective the scenario played out quite differently. there were a number of pesky hangups with this batch, namely a stuck mash and running out of propane mid boil. which i know now, every four brewing sessions, i need to fill up on propane. brewing beer is not cheap.
every spring it is windy as shit here in vegas. and every spring everyone is like, "fucking wind, man!" due to the fact that i dont have a wind shield for my propane burner, the wind really messes with me. it takes forever to boil anything. to make matters worse, on this morning, i picked up the propane tank and thought geez, that feels a little light. foolishly, i had not given the tank the ol' pick-up-and-see-how heavy it is-test prior. so instead of just going to get more propane right then and there i decided that i had enough and proceeded with the work at hand. do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.
about thirty minutes into the boil, i lost my BTU's. i lugged seven gallons of boiling wort up the steps and into the kitchen. i placed the wort on the stove. my pot is about 1" to tall to fit on my stove. oh yes, i know that now. so i decided to use the front two burners with the kettle hanging off rather precariously. the pot stayed on just fine. but the burners were too widely placed. they were on the outer quarter of the kettle. i turned the back burners on just for the hell of it. the range fan went on automatically. i didnt even know it did that! the boil wasnt coming back. i have a two gallon pot. i filled that up with wort and put it on the burner behind the kettle. i have a one gallon pot. i did the same with that and put it on the other burner behind the pot. i was using the shit out of some natural gas. it was just a waste, a tease.
FINALLY, chessie came home from work. this was about three in the afternoon. i went and got propane. i returned home. i fired up the burner once again. an hour later i was pretty much done.
all this left me rather drained. oh yeah, and i forgot to mention the stuck mash from hell i had. the batch before, i had a stuck mash too, the blonde ale. i had figured it was because the tubing that connected my ball valve to the false bottom was the regular, squishy, clear, vinyl, type. woah, hows that for a string of modifiers? anyway, i had changed the old tubing out before this brown porter batch with the high temp, stiff, cloth braided vinyl type. i thought this stiffer tubing would not get crushed by the weight of the grains when i began to lauter. but begining to lauter again this time, i ran into the same problem. i was able to get a couple quarts, i thought things were going fine and then BAM! stuck mash. it was horrible. i blew into the line, i sucked the line. i jiggled the mash tun, pounded against the sides. if you woulda seen me working that tun you would have been embarassed for me. you'd a thought i was tyrone biggums working the shaft for a ten baggy of crack cocaine!
mental images aside, what i realized is that the problem wasnt so much the tubing(although that could have been part of it) as it was my water to grist ratio. i have been used to keeping my lbs. grain/qts water at a 1/1 ratio. This is fine for single step mashes. The mash at this ratio, in a single infusion is great for lautering. But, when doing a stepped mash, the ratio of water to grain is greatly increased. This increased ratio makes for a much thinner mash. Instead of the grain expanding and getting thick as with a single infusion mash, during a stepped mash, the evolving mash becomes more and more dilute. i have realized that when performing a stepped mash, the amount of water that will be added into the process has to be taken into account. a 1/1 ration is just too much water to start out with. this ratio allows the grain bed to compress with the additions of boiling water to reach the desired temperatures of the steps, instead of staying suspended as with a single infusion. does this make sense? so, the solution is to decrease the ratio of water to grain during the initial infusion, based on the number of steps that will be performed during the mash. that way, the mash will not become too dilute and cause the grain bed to compress upon itself during lautering, thus causing a stuck mash. problem solved.
so other than the stuck mash, running out of propane, and the wind, the brew sesh went fine. i forgot to tell you that the yeast i used was a...no idea. sorry. i must get better at taking notes!
Saturday, May 22, 2010
reefer madness blonde ale
i call this beer reefer madness not because of the weed that isn't in it, but because it was brewed on 4/20. for some reason i hadn't written the date down in my notes as to the brewing date and i started to become confused. but then i remembered. oh yeaaaaaaah...it was four twenty man.
if you were to witness the absentmindedness of my trip to the brew store for this last brew session you would surely think i was stoned. i had two items on my list of things to get while i was at the store. irish moss, and bottle caps. armed with my 80 classic styles book and the BJCP style guidelines, i was winging the rest. guess what i forgot? grains, check. hops, check. yeast, harvested from my aipa, check. yeah, the two things i had written down...the two things i forgot. i think i have some sort of disease.
LUCKILY, thanks to my new friend Jon Christiansen, head brewer at joseph james brewing, i was able to procure a bunch of caps. i really didnt want to have to drive across town for one item. but if jon hadnt come through, i would have had to. i only have one carboy. as such, i bottle one day and brew the next, to keep my equipment at its max capacity. i guess i could start brewing and then bottle while i am waiting for my water...either way, not having those caps was fucking me up. thanks jon! having a brewery ten minutes away from the pad comes in handy.
so with this blonde ale i have changed some things. first, i moved up from a five to a ten gallon igloo for my mash tun. i bought two of them when i saw them at the local grocery for cheap. i figured someone would want one eventually. or not, whatever. with this increase in volume of my mash tun i am afforded some options i did not have before in my brewing process. let me elaborate...
the first thing i can do is make "bigger" beers. since i have more volume, that increases the amount of grain i can mash, thus making it possible for me to extract worts with a higher gravity. this increases the amount of styles i will be able to brew. double ipa's come to mind, as do imperial stouts. increasing the volume of my mash tun also allows me more control of the mash. instead of mashing for an hour at one temp of say 155, i can do "stepped" mashs. this involves an initial 1/2 hour mash at a low temp. then, with the increased volume, i can add more water at boiling temp to raise the temperature of the mash and rest again for another half hour at a medium temp. finally, i can repeat this again for the final rest at the highest temp. doing these rests messes with the chemistry of the mash in a way that i don't fully understand, but supposedly is more efficient at extracting the sugars from the grain and breaking up proteins necesarry for making higher quality beer.
a five gallon mash tun simply does not have enough volume to allow for these types of rests. a ten gallon does. it all has to do with thermodynamics and how much energy it takes to raise a given volume of water a certain amount of degrees. john palmer in How to Brew, goes through these steps and provides the formulas necesarry to calculate how much water and at what temperature is necessary to make these steps. i would not be able to figure out this stuff on my own. good thing i love math.
so now with my stepped up equipment, i decided to put this to work on my blonde ale.
ingredients:
ummm...somehow i dont have any information regarding my blond ale, recipe wise. that is what i get for waiting over a month to write about it i guess.
anyway, it wasnt even that great. i have about a 12 pack and six bombers left of the batch and i havent been very impressed. i keep getting a real bitter taste, that i dont think is coming from the hops. i think its from the grain. not sure what i did wrong. i guess i could just let it sit for a while and see how it does.
hmmm...what else. i know the mormons stopped by a few times. they live next door so i see them all the time. they always seem interested in what im doing even though i know they don't drink. come to think of it, people are always interested when they see me brewing. one lady was like, "what are you doing, frying a turkey?" and i was like, "no, making beer." then she stood there watching while i gave her a little run down of what i was doing. when people ask what im doing its very satisfying to be able to reply, "making beer." im proud that i brew beer and like all brewers out there, i love talking about beer. its even better when the person your talking to about it doesn't know anything about beer because they get this look of bewildered awe that you have so much to say about it. i guess its the kind of look i must get when someone is talking to me who knows proportionally more about beer than i do than i do versus the schmo that doesn't know anything. does that make sense? and i mean "schmo" endearingly by the way.
thats it for this one.
CHEERS!
if you were to witness the absentmindedness of my trip to the brew store for this last brew session you would surely think i was stoned. i had two items on my list of things to get while i was at the store. irish moss, and bottle caps. armed with my 80 classic styles book and the BJCP style guidelines, i was winging the rest. guess what i forgot? grains, check. hops, check. yeast, harvested from my aipa, check. yeah, the two things i had written down...the two things i forgot. i think i have some sort of disease.
LUCKILY, thanks to my new friend Jon Christiansen, head brewer at joseph james brewing, i was able to procure a bunch of caps. i really didnt want to have to drive across town for one item. but if jon hadnt come through, i would have had to. i only have one carboy. as such, i bottle one day and brew the next, to keep my equipment at its max capacity. i guess i could start brewing and then bottle while i am waiting for my water...either way, not having those caps was fucking me up. thanks jon! having a brewery ten minutes away from the pad comes in handy.
so with this blonde ale i have changed some things. first, i moved up from a five to a ten gallon igloo for my mash tun. i bought two of them when i saw them at the local grocery for cheap. i figured someone would want one eventually. or not, whatever. with this increase in volume of my mash tun i am afforded some options i did not have before in my brewing process. let me elaborate...
the first thing i can do is make "bigger" beers. since i have more volume, that increases the amount of grain i can mash, thus making it possible for me to extract worts with a higher gravity. this increases the amount of styles i will be able to brew. double ipa's come to mind, as do imperial stouts. increasing the volume of my mash tun also allows me more control of the mash. instead of mashing for an hour at one temp of say 155, i can do "stepped" mashs. this involves an initial 1/2 hour mash at a low temp. then, with the increased volume, i can add more water at boiling temp to raise the temperature of the mash and rest again for another half hour at a medium temp. finally, i can repeat this again for the final rest at the highest temp. doing these rests messes with the chemistry of the mash in a way that i don't fully understand, but supposedly is more efficient at extracting the sugars from the grain and breaking up proteins necesarry for making higher quality beer.
a five gallon mash tun simply does not have enough volume to allow for these types of rests. a ten gallon does. it all has to do with thermodynamics and how much energy it takes to raise a given volume of water a certain amount of degrees. john palmer in How to Brew, goes through these steps and provides the formulas necesarry to calculate how much water and at what temperature is necessary to make these steps. i would not be able to figure out this stuff on my own. good thing i love math.
so now with my stepped up equipment, i decided to put this to work on my blonde ale.
ingredients:
ummm...somehow i dont have any information regarding my blond ale, recipe wise. that is what i get for waiting over a month to write about it i guess.
anyway, it wasnt even that great. i have about a 12 pack and six bombers left of the batch and i havent been very impressed. i keep getting a real bitter taste, that i dont think is coming from the hops. i think its from the grain. not sure what i did wrong. i guess i could just let it sit for a while and see how it does.
hmmm...what else. i know the mormons stopped by a few times. they live next door so i see them all the time. they always seem interested in what im doing even though i know they don't drink. come to think of it, people are always interested when they see me brewing. one lady was like, "what are you doing, frying a turkey?" and i was like, "no, making beer." then she stood there watching while i gave her a little run down of what i was doing. when people ask what im doing its very satisfying to be able to reply, "making beer." im proud that i brew beer and like all brewers out there, i love talking about beer. its even better when the person your talking to about it doesn't know anything about beer because they get this look of bewildered awe that you have so much to say about it. i guess its the kind of look i must get when someone is talking to me who knows proportionally more about beer than i do than i do versus the schmo that doesn't know anything. does that make sense? and i mean "schmo" endearingly by the way.
thats it for this one.
CHEERS!
commercial brewery hangout, homebrew contest
through my friend JR, i met the head brewer of joseph James brewing in henderson, nv. JR and i were invited to swing by the brewery and hang out while jon christiansen, head brewer, brewed. we got to sample some fresh beer from the bright tanks and talk about the ins and outs of brewing, both commercially and at home. it was a good day. and to think all this time, right under my nose, there was a brewery. i go to school across the street from the place and never even realized it was there. it was pretty cool to hang out with Jon and really see the brewing process from start to finish. really, its just home brewing on steroids.
i entered my first homebrew contest sponsored by the local club here in vegas, april 10th. there were over a hundred entries. i entered four beers. in order from oldest to newest they were:
the pale ale got massacred. 18/50, presence of DMS (dimethyl sulfide) being noted by both judges. they really didn't like the way it smelled and one judge thought it necessary to note: nothing about this beer stands out and it will be easily forgotten. ouch. thanks for the non-constructive criticism. non distinctive at best, too ordinary at worst? christ almighty, thats a humdinger!
my american ipa did better with a score of 25.5/50. no flaws, but over all too balanced. the judges were definitely looking for a more robust hop presence. i would agree. the beer drank quite nicely, was smooth and very agreeable. it just lacked that punch of the typical american IPA, both in flavor and aroma.
the american amber ale did the best out of all my entries. it scored a 34.5/50. that's "very good!" a vanilla aroma which i never detected was noted by both judges. however i hadn't drank one in a month or two as i had run out. the good ones always seem to go the quickest. i was happy to note that both judges were not able to find any flaws in the beer. i believe that this american amber did the best because our water is most well suited to the style.
my first sojourn into the world of beer competition was very eye opening. even as a i prepared my beers for entry i realized that even though i had an idea of what style they were "supposed" to be, i really had no idea if they would perform as such. just entering one contest alone has really broadened my perspective and approach to brewing. you could get a PhD in this stuff.
i have since printed a copy of the BJCP style guidelines and have been using them to better inform my recipe preparation. brewing beer is definitely a lifelong hobby that i view mastering as being closely akin to reaching enlightenment. its all about the journey. there will never be a shortage of things to learn or marvels to contemplate.
i entered my first homebrew contest sponsored by the local club here in vegas, april 10th. there were over a hundred entries. i entered four beers. in order from oldest to newest they were:
- american amber ale, category 10B, brewed 12/19, bottled 1/11
- american india pale ale, category 14B, brewed 1/10, bottled 1/30
- american pale ale, category 10A, brewed 2/7, bottled 2/27
- american wheat ale, category 6D, brewed 3/1, bottled 3/22
the pale ale got massacred. 18/50, presence of DMS (dimethyl sulfide) being noted by both judges. they really didn't like the way it smelled and one judge thought it necessary to note: nothing about this beer stands out and it will be easily forgotten. ouch. thanks for the non-constructive criticism. non distinctive at best, too ordinary at worst? christ almighty, thats a humdinger!
my american ipa did better with a score of 25.5/50. no flaws, but over all too balanced. the judges were definitely looking for a more robust hop presence. i would agree. the beer drank quite nicely, was smooth and very agreeable. it just lacked that punch of the typical american IPA, both in flavor and aroma.
the american amber ale did the best out of all my entries. it scored a 34.5/50. that's "very good!" a vanilla aroma which i never detected was noted by both judges. however i hadn't drank one in a month or two as i had run out. the good ones always seem to go the quickest. i was happy to note that both judges were not able to find any flaws in the beer. i believe that this american amber did the best because our water is most well suited to the style.
my first sojourn into the world of beer competition was very eye opening. even as a i prepared my beers for entry i realized that even though i had an idea of what style they were "supposed" to be, i really had no idea if they would perform as such. just entering one contest alone has really broadened my perspective and approach to brewing. you could get a PhD in this stuff.
i have since printed a copy of the BJCP style guidelines and have been using them to better inform my recipe preparation. brewing beer is definitely a lifelong hobby that i view mastering as being closely akin to reaching enlightenment. its all about the journey. there will never be a shortage of things to learn or marvels to contemplate.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
dual brew with JR
Either right before or soon after the American wheat ale brew session, I cant remember which, my friend JR called me up. He wanted to get together and brew some beer. So, we scheduled a date and on Sunday the 28th of March we made a day of it.
A week or so before our brew day i realized that if I didn't get everything together before it was time to leave, I would have a nightmare on my hands. JR lives thirty miles away. If i thought i had to be organized brewing thirty feet from my kitchen, i had another thing coming.
This brew session was going to be another lesson in logistics. I purposely had not gone to the brew store yet. Although i needed malt and yeast, the brew store is 1/2 way between JR's and my house. It didn't make sense to go there and then come back when i would be headed that direction anyway in a couple days. My ultimate plan was to depart from my humble abode in the AM of our brew day, make a stop at the brew shop for supplies, and then continue on to JR's.
Early in the week, i made a call to the the beer store, just to see if Steve the owner would have what i was going to need on hand. If he didn't, i wanted to be ready for what he did have, that way i could make any necessary substitutions/changes ahead of time. Smart, huh?
The phone rang and rang. I got the machine. It went something to the tune of this: "I'm gone all week on a cruise, blah blah blah, I'll be back for an early open on Saturday at 9 AM. Then regular hours will presume..." Sonofabitch! My plan was shot on more than one level.
I realized that on Sunday Steve wouldn't open until 11AM. This certainly did not jive with JR and I's plan to start brewing at 10 o'clock. If Steve wasn't opening his store till 11, then that meant i wouldn't get to JR's until at the very earliest, noon. That in turn would mean the brew wouldn't really get underway until 1PM, thus giving a conservatively estimated finishing time of 7PM. Being a Sunday, that would be way too late. There was no way around it. I was going to have to make a trip to the brew store on Saturday morning when Steve opened early whether i liked it or not.
Saturday I went to the store and got my supplies. It killed me to drive thirty miles round trip for no other reason than one. When I get in my car I like to try and get more than one thing done at a time. On this occasion it didn't happen. Steve ended up having pretty much everything i needed for my Belgian pale ale recipe. He had all the malts and hop varieties I wanted and I only had to compromise a little with the yeast. And hey, whatya' know, he was only a half hour late opening the store.
Usually i have to use the grain mill Steve provides on premise but JR had recently received a mill as a gift from his girlfriend so he had one at his house. A grain mill is a staple tool of the brewer. However, a mill can be one of the more expensive pieces of equipment in a home brewers arsenal. Many brew supply stores provide a mill as a complimentary amenity to their customers. You simply purchase your grain, grind it right there on the spot, and take it home. It is a friendly, much appreciated, cost saving gesture extended by brew supply store owners.
However, owning your own grain mill has several advantages. First, there is the convenience factor. Once you mill grain it isn't really advantageous to not use it right away. It gets stale and becomes susceptible to moisture. With a grain mill at home, you don't have to mill your grain until you are actually ready to brew. If something comes up that derails your brewing effort, no problem. You can be assured to always have nice, freshly milled grain.
The cost saving that can be realized with a grain mill are another reason why owning one would be sweet. Since you wouldn't be dependent upon the brew shop for freshly milled grain, and unmilled grain will stay fresher longer, then that means the brewer can buy in bulk. All he needs is a dry place to store the grain. Buying 50 lbs of base grain for 25 or 30 or even 50 dollars is WAY cheaper than buying 10 lbs at a time for 15-20 bucks. Or a pound at 8-10 dollars for that matter.
A disadvantage of using the mill at the home brew shop is that it isn't yours. With a mill at home you know who has used it, what went through it, and most importantly the spacing between the grinding surfaces. Ideally, the grain should get crushed just enough to pop open the outer husk and give the inside a slight crush. The husk needs to stay relatively intact as it will act as a "spacer" in the mash during lautering.
During the mashing process, the soluble, rich, starchy center of the the grain is dissolved into water and becomes wort. The insoluble husk of the grain is left behind and aides in forming a filter which the water of the mash drains through in the lautering process, taking the dissolved sugars with it and leaving behind the spent grain. If the crush is too fine, these husks will break down and get into the wort, negating the positive filtering effect they have when left whole. Remember the stuck mash? Too fine a grind is a common cause of stuck mashes.
On the other hand, if the grain does not receive enough of a crush, the starchy inside of the grain will not be dissolved well enough, creating another common problem brewers face, low efficiency. That is to say, poor sugar yield from the malted grain. Owning a grain mill allows a brewer to adjust the crush in the privacy and luxury of his own space, further personalizing the end product.
So yeah, Saturday I went and got my supplies at the store, came home, and began packing all my shit into my little 97' Toyota Tercel. I didn't think everything would fit, but after a few creative maneuvers, everything did. Just about perfect too.
The next day went without incident. I got a slightly stuck mash for the first time ever, but having another brewer on sight is VERY convenient. JR and I got it figured out pretty quick. Some of the grain had gotten through the false bottom of my mash tun and was plugging the line to my ball valve. Once we got that cleared everything else just fell into place.
JR had some sort of stout going with a gigantic grain bill, like twenty pounds or something. He had just set up a new ten gallon IGLOO mash tun and made full use of it with a protein rest and all. Turns out he was trying for the first time an idea i had been mulling over for a couple brews. He was using the stainless steel false bottom from his five gallon mash tun, in the ten gallon IGLOO. All he did was just switch out the hardware.
I had been tempted to try this before but i just never had the grain bill to justify the decision or the balls to just do it. It worked fine. We discussed whether it made sense or not and we both thought there was no reason why it shouldn't work. The only thing we could see being an issue was the steel being moved or lifted while stirring in the grain and the water at the beginning of the mash. Like I said, it worked fine. There were no issues.
Another thing JR was trying for the first time was a little pond pump he had procured from Home Depot for cheap. The idea he was getting at was similar to the drill pump i used to re-circulate ice water through my wort chiller. Instead of fumbling around with a drill, you just put the pump at the bottom of your container, attach the hose to the inlet of your wort chiller and the pump, fill the container with mostly ice and some water, plug it in and let her rip.
The water comes out hot, back into the top of the container from the outlet of the wort chiller. The pump, submerged at the bottom, continues to circulate cold water through the chiller. The first ten pounds of ice goes fairly quickly, but the second ten goes quite a bit slower. It is debatable whether a third ten is even needed, but we used it anyway. I took my five and a half gallons or so of boiling 212 degree wort to somewhere near 75 degrees in about 20 minutes. I didn't even do anything but stand there. Totally awesome.
I decided then and there that I was done with my drill driven pump that was a piece of shit and a pain in the ass to use. Sometimes its just worth that extra 20 or 30 bucks. Plus I would have had to buy a new pump anyway. I could tell mine was on its last leg and i hadn't even used it 10 times. JUNK.
This Belgian pale ale came in with an OG: 1.059. Stylistically speaking, that's a few points outside of the high end of the style according to the BJCP. But i can live with that. It was a great day. The sun was shining, the beer was flowing like wine, and the tacos we made on the grill were excellent. Another success. Oh yeah, i forgot to mention, JR was the one who introduced me to brewing in the first place. So this session really took the whole process full circle for me.
Belgian Pale Ale
Belgian Pilsner Malt, 3.5L, 10 lbs.
Belgian Biscuit/Amber Malt, 20L, 1 lb.
Belgian Med, Caramel Munich Malt, 60L, 1 lb.
Mash 152, 60 min.
90 min. boil
UK Kent Goldings, 5.4%, 1 oz., 60 min.
" .5 oz., flame out
Whitelabs WLP 550 Belgian Ale Yeast, one vial, no starter
Next up, Blonde Ale. But first, a brief detour into the land of commercial brewing and the subjectivity that are homebrew competitions. To be cont'd...
A week or so before our brew day i realized that if I didn't get everything together before it was time to leave, I would have a nightmare on my hands. JR lives thirty miles away. If i thought i had to be organized brewing thirty feet from my kitchen, i had another thing coming.
This brew session was going to be another lesson in logistics. I purposely had not gone to the brew store yet. Although i needed malt and yeast, the brew store is 1/2 way between JR's and my house. It didn't make sense to go there and then come back when i would be headed that direction anyway in a couple days. My ultimate plan was to depart from my humble abode in the AM of our brew day, make a stop at the brew shop for supplies, and then continue on to JR's.
Early in the week, i made a call to the the beer store, just to see if Steve the owner would have what i was going to need on hand. If he didn't, i wanted to be ready for what he did have, that way i could make any necessary substitutions/changes ahead of time. Smart, huh?
The phone rang and rang. I got the machine. It went something to the tune of this: "I'm gone all week on a cruise, blah blah blah, I'll be back for an early open on Saturday at 9 AM. Then regular hours will presume..." Sonofabitch! My plan was shot on more than one level.
I realized that on Sunday Steve wouldn't open until 11AM. This certainly did not jive with JR and I's plan to start brewing at 10 o'clock. If Steve wasn't opening his store till 11, then that meant i wouldn't get to JR's until at the very earliest, noon. That in turn would mean the brew wouldn't really get underway until 1PM, thus giving a conservatively estimated finishing time of 7PM. Being a Sunday, that would be way too late. There was no way around it. I was going to have to make a trip to the brew store on Saturday morning when Steve opened early whether i liked it or not.
Saturday I went to the store and got my supplies. It killed me to drive thirty miles round trip for no other reason than one. When I get in my car I like to try and get more than one thing done at a time. On this occasion it didn't happen. Steve ended up having pretty much everything i needed for my Belgian pale ale recipe. He had all the malts and hop varieties I wanted and I only had to compromise a little with the yeast. And hey, whatya' know, he was only a half hour late opening the store.
Usually i have to use the grain mill Steve provides on premise but JR had recently received a mill as a gift from his girlfriend so he had one at his house. A grain mill is a staple tool of the brewer. However, a mill can be one of the more expensive pieces of equipment in a home brewers arsenal. Many brew supply stores provide a mill as a complimentary amenity to their customers. You simply purchase your grain, grind it right there on the spot, and take it home. It is a friendly, much appreciated, cost saving gesture extended by brew supply store owners.
However, owning your own grain mill has several advantages. First, there is the convenience factor. Once you mill grain it isn't really advantageous to not use it right away. It gets stale and becomes susceptible to moisture. With a grain mill at home, you don't have to mill your grain until you are actually ready to brew. If something comes up that derails your brewing effort, no problem. You can be assured to always have nice, freshly milled grain.
The cost saving that can be realized with a grain mill are another reason why owning one would be sweet. Since you wouldn't be dependent upon the brew shop for freshly milled grain, and unmilled grain will stay fresher longer, then that means the brewer can buy in bulk. All he needs is a dry place to store the grain. Buying 50 lbs of base grain for 25 or 30 or even 50 dollars is WAY cheaper than buying 10 lbs at a time for 15-20 bucks. Or a pound at 8-10 dollars for that matter.
A disadvantage of using the mill at the home brew shop is that it isn't yours. With a mill at home you know who has used it, what went through it, and most importantly the spacing between the grinding surfaces. Ideally, the grain should get crushed just enough to pop open the outer husk and give the inside a slight crush. The husk needs to stay relatively intact as it will act as a "spacer" in the mash during lautering.
During the mashing process, the soluble, rich, starchy center of the the grain is dissolved into water and becomes wort. The insoluble husk of the grain is left behind and aides in forming a filter which the water of the mash drains through in the lautering process, taking the dissolved sugars with it and leaving behind the spent grain. If the crush is too fine, these husks will break down and get into the wort, negating the positive filtering effect they have when left whole. Remember the stuck mash? Too fine a grind is a common cause of stuck mashes.
On the other hand, if the grain does not receive enough of a crush, the starchy inside of the grain will not be dissolved well enough, creating another common problem brewers face, low efficiency. That is to say, poor sugar yield from the malted grain. Owning a grain mill allows a brewer to adjust the crush in the privacy and luxury of his own space, further personalizing the end product.
So yeah, Saturday I went and got my supplies at the store, came home, and began packing all my shit into my little 97' Toyota Tercel. I didn't think everything would fit, but after a few creative maneuvers, everything did. Just about perfect too.
The next day went without incident. I got a slightly stuck mash for the first time ever, but having another brewer on sight is VERY convenient. JR and I got it figured out pretty quick. Some of the grain had gotten through the false bottom of my mash tun and was plugging the line to my ball valve. Once we got that cleared everything else just fell into place.
JR had some sort of stout going with a gigantic grain bill, like twenty pounds or something. He had just set up a new ten gallon IGLOO mash tun and made full use of it with a protein rest and all. Turns out he was trying for the first time an idea i had been mulling over for a couple brews. He was using the stainless steel false bottom from his five gallon mash tun, in the ten gallon IGLOO. All he did was just switch out the hardware.
I had been tempted to try this before but i just never had the grain bill to justify the decision or the balls to just do it. It worked fine. We discussed whether it made sense or not and we both thought there was no reason why it shouldn't work. The only thing we could see being an issue was the steel being moved or lifted while stirring in the grain and the water at the beginning of the mash. Like I said, it worked fine. There were no issues.
Another thing JR was trying for the first time was a little pond pump he had procured from Home Depot for cheap. The idea he was getting at was similar to the drill pump i used to re-circulate ice water through my wort chiller. Instead of fumbling around with a drill, you just put the pump at the bottom of your container, attach the hose to the inlet of your wort chiller and the pump, fill the container with mostly ice and some water, plug it in and let her rip.
The water comes out hot, back into the top of the container from the outlet of the wort chiller. The pump, submerged at the bottom, continues to circulate cold water through the chiller. The first ten pounds of ice goes fairly quickly, but the second ten goes quite a bit slower. It is debatable whether a third ten is even needed, but we used it anyway. I took my five and a half gallons or so of boiling 212 degree wort to somewhere near 75 degrees in about 20 minutes. I didn't even do anything but stand there. Totally awesome.
I decided then and there that I was done with my drill driven pump that was a piece of shit and a pain in the ass to use. Sometimes its just worth that extra 20 or 30 bucks. Plus I would have had to buy a new pump anyway. I could tell mine was on its last leg and i hadn't even used it 10 times. JUNK.
This Belgian pale ale came in with an OG: 1.059. Stylistically speaking, that's a few points outside of the high end of the style according to the BJCP. But i can live with that. It was a great day. The sun was shining, the beer was flowing like wine, and the tacos we made on the grill were excellent. Another success. Oh yeah, i forgot to mention, JR was the one who introduced me to brewing in the first place. So this session really took the whole process full circle for me.
Belgian Pale Ale
Belgian Pilsner Malt, 3.5L, 10 lbs.
Belgian Biscuit/Amber Malt, 20L, 1 lb.
Belgian Med, Caramel Munich Malt, 60L, 1 lb.
Mash 152, 60 min.
90 min. boil
UK Kent Goldings, 5.4%, 1 oz., 60 min.
" .5 oz., flame out
Whitelabs WLP 550 Belgian Ale Yeast, one vial, no starter
Next up, Blonde Ale. But first, a brief detour into the land of commercial brewing and the subjectivity that are homebrew competitions. To be cont'd...
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
some catching up
So yesterday I brewed a blonde ale. OG came in at 1.049, in the upper end of the style. BUT, you know how sometimes in the movies the opening scene ends up actually being the end? Such is the case here. I don't know what that literary device is called though. Do you?
Our journey begins much earlier. well, not that much earlier. March 1, to be specific. My plan involved brewing an American wheat ale. My plan also involved brewing completely outside, as a complaint from a neighbor brought the fuzz down. The office knocked on my door and said I wasn't allowed to have the propane burner on the porch. I went through this in great detail in my "pale ale" post. As such, a whole new set of challenges interjected themselves into my brewing process.
This whole new set of challenges really comes down to organization. Since i have a propane burner on for the bulk of my brew in a public space, i am required to be in attendance. i cant just leave or walk away or go lolly gag on the beer forums or whatever. I cant leave an open flame unattended. So, this forces me to be organized. This in turn, forces me to go up and down my stairs over and over again before i can begin my brewing process.
First, i get out my trusty collapsible, adjustible sawhorses from the utility closet. i bring the sawhorses down to the foot of the stairs where i create a work table with them. Then i go get my mash tun and various kitchen utensils. Then i go get the brew pot. Then i go get the propane burner and the propane from the deck. Then i go get my water. Then i bring it down and start to fill my kettle. THEN,...you get the idea. What it boils down to is I have to have everything ready before i turn the burner on. Once that burner is on, i do not like to leave my work space.
As you fellow brewers may know, there is always something that takes you away from your work space. Brewing is this way by its very nature. I think that is what keeps me excited about brewing. There is always that x factor, the unknown, the variable you have to solve for, the struggle, the challenge. It is ever present.
Most of the technicalities involved with brewing happen pre-boil. By this i mean extracting the sugar from the malt is in my opinion the most difficult part of brewing. There are a lot of variables to think about. This American wheat definately had its share. Wheat has a much different character than barley when being mashed. When mashing, barley has a soupy consistency, whereas wheat is much more "porridgey." What this means for the brewer, is that when it comes time to drain the sugar water from the spent grain (lautering the wort), wheat can gum up the works, causing a "stuck mash." This is a frustrating and time consuming problem.
To counteract the tendency for wheat to clog up the brewing system (oats act the same way), brewers will add rice hulls to their grain bills. Rice hulls do not impart any flavor or sugar to the mash, but assist in keeping the mash from becoming too tight as the liquid drains through it. This is advantageous to the brewer since it does not effect the sugar content or taste profile of the style of being created, and creates an environment that deters the dreaded stuck mash. Win/Win situation.
As I stood there gazing lovingly at my mash tun, these thoughts had begun to congeal in my head. I began to get nervous and my palms started to sweat. I had not added any rice hulls to my grain bill and it was HALF wheat. Shit. Well it was too late now to do anything about it but hope i didn't get a stuck mash. To spare you any further suspense, somehow, miraculously, i did not get a stuck mash.
The boil went along swimmingly. I even remembered to use my Irish moss! Totally unnecessary, I remembered to not remember. Does that even make sense? Stylistically, it is appropriate for a wheat beer to be cloudy. Oh well, we'll get em' next time. One thing to note: the boil was rather vigorous. Even with just a 60 minute boil i lost some volume. As such, my OG came in a little high and outside of the style parameter by a couple points at 1.058. Next time i will remember to keep a better eye on the boil.
Cooling the wort was the usual pain in the butt, but nothing out of the ordinary. Pitching my yeast was a breeze. I got lazy and didn't make a starter. Just the Wyeast smack-pack. It did the trick. Within a day it was attenuating quite nicely.
Accept for the fact that i was continually forgetting things i needed and sneaking hurriedly away to go get them and then coming back before anyone noticed i wasn't attending my open flame, the brew went fairly well.
The recipe is as follows:
American Wheat Ale- brewed 3/1/2010
Domestic 2 Row, 6.5 lbs.
Wheat Malt, 7 lbs.
Willamette Pellets 5%, 1 oz., 60 min.
" .3 oz., flame-out
Centennial Pellets 9%, .3 oz., flame-out
Wyeast SmackPack, 1010 American Wheat
Mash @ 152, 60 min.
OG 1.058
FG 1.013 (beer is a tad too alcoholic for style)
Now, we continue on our journey. Fast forward 27 days- 3/28/2010. Location: Justin Reisetter's house. Batch up to bat: Belgian Pale Ale. Batch on deck, Blonde Ale.
To be cont' (intermission, author needs to take a piss because of coffe and energy drink consumed)
Our journey begins much earlier. well, not that much earlier. March 1, to be specific. My plan involved brewing an American wheat ale. My plan also involved brewing completely outside, as a complaint from a neighbor brought the fuzz down. The office knocked on my door and said I wasn't allowed to have the propane burner on the porch. I went through this in great detail in my "pale ale" post. As such, a whole new set of challenges interjected themselves into my brewing process.
This whole new set of challenges really comes down to organization. Since i have a propane burner on for the bulk of my brew in a public space, i am required to be in attendance. i cant just leave or walk away or go lolly gag on the beer forums or whatever. I cant leave an open flame unattended. So, this forces me to be organized. This in turn, forces me to go up and down my stairs over and over again before i can begin my brewing process.
First, i get out my trusty collapsible, adjustible sawhorses from the utility closet. i bring the sawhorses down to the foot of the stairs where i create a work table with them. Then i go get my mash tun and various kitchen utensils. Then i go get the brew pot. Then i go get the propane burner and the propane from the deck. Then i go get my water. Then i bring it down and start to fill my kettle. THEN,...you get the idea. What it boils down to is I have to have everything ready before i turn the burner on. Once that burner is on, i do not like to leave my work space.
As you fellow brewers may know, there is always something that takes you away from your work space. Brewing is this way by its very nature. I think that is what keeps me excited about brewing. There is always that x factor, the unknown, the variable you have to solve for, the struggle, the challenge. It is ever present.
Most of the technicalities involved with brewing happen pre-boil. By this i mean extracting the sugar from the malt is in my opinion the most difficult part of brewing. There are a lot of variables to think about. This American wheat definately had its share. Wheat has a much different character than barley when being mashed. When mashing, barley has a soupy consistency, whereas wheat is much more "porridgey." What this means for the brewer, is that when it comes time to drain the sugar water from the spent grain (lautering the wort), wheat can gum up the works, causing a "stuck mash." This is a frustrating and time consuming problem.
To counteract the tendency for wheat to clog up the brewing system (oats act the same way), brewers will add rice hulls to their grain bills. Rice hulls do not impart any flavor or sugar to the mash, but assist in keeping the mash from becoming too tight as the liquid drains through it. This is advantageous to the brewer since it does not effect the sugar content or taste profile of the style of being created, and creates an environment that deters the dreaded stuck mash. Win/Win situation.
As I stood there gazing lovingly at my mash tun, these thoughts had begun to congeal in my head. I began to get nervous and my palms started to sweat. I had not added any rice hulls to my grain bill and it was HALF wheat. Shit. Well it was too late now to do anything about it but hope i didn't get a stuck mash. To spare you any further suspense, somehow, miraculously, i did not get a stuck mash.
The boil went along swimmingly. I even remembered to use my Irish moss! Totally unnecessary, I remembered to not remember. Does that even make sense? Stylistically, it is appropriate for a wheat beer to be cloudy. Oh well, we'll get em' next time. One thing to note: the boil was rather vigorous. Even with just a 60 minute boil i lost some volume. As such, my OG came in a little high and outside of the style parameter by a couple points at 1.058. Next time i will remember to keep a better eye on the boil.
Cooling the wort was the usual pain in the butt, but nothing out of the ordinary. Pitching my yeast was a breeze. I got lazy and didn't make a starter. Just the Wyeast smack-pack. It did the trick. Within a day it was attenuating quite nicely.
Accept for the fact that i was continually forgetting things i needed and sneaking hurriedly away to go get them and then coming back before anyone noticed i wasn't attending my open flame, the brew went fairly well.
The recipe is as follows:
American Wheat Ale- brewed 3/1/2010
Domestic 2 Row, 6.5 lbs.
Wheat Malt, 7 lbs.
Willamette Pellets 5%, 1 oz., 60 min.
" .3 oz., flame-out
Centennial Pellets 9%, .3 oz., flame-out
Wyeast SmackPack, 1010 American Wheat
Mash @ 152, 60 min.
OG 1.058
FG 1.013 (beer is a tad too alcoholic for style)
Now, we continue on our journey. Fast forward 27 days- 3/28/2010. Location: Justin Reisetter's house. Batch up to bat: Belgian Pale Ale. Batch on deck, Blonde Ale.
To be cont' (intermission, author needs to take a piss because of coffe and energy drink consumed)
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Beauty and the Beast
Another title would be "diacetyl does not belong in blonde ale." Diacetyl is caused by:
a.) unhealthy yeast
b.) not enough yeast
c.) insufficient aeration of the wort before pitching of the yeast
Any combination of these can cause
d.) a long lag time between pitching and fermentation
Finally, diacetyl can be caused by a
e.) bacterial infection
According to the 2008 BJCP Style Guidelines, under Style 6, Light Hybrid Beer, sub style B, Blonde Ale, it is stated that this beer style should be without any diacetyl at all, both in aroma and flavor.
So, it would seem to me, this beginner style beer (Brewing Classic Styles, 2007, p. 9), although simple enough in theory, is completely and utterly dependent on the backbone of sound brewing techniques. Without healthy yeast and solid sanitation practices, this simple brew, without any rugs to sweep anything under, is very unforgiving. Without TLC, it will not shine as it is supposed to. The blonde ale's potential is only realized when its brewer has mastered the very foundation, the pillars of this noble art that is home brewing.
Now, that being said, anyone have any advice as I embark on brewing my first blonde ale?
a.) unhealthy yeast
b.) not enough yeast
c.) insufficient aeration of the wort before pitching of the yeast
Any combination of these can cause
d.) a long lag time between pitching and fermentation
Finally, diacetyl can be caused by a
e.) bacterial infection
According to the 2008 BJCP Style Guidelines, under Style 6, Light Hybrid Beer, sub style B, Blonde Ale, it is stated that this beer style should be without any diacetyl at all, both in aroma and flavor.
So, it would seem to me, this beginner style beer (Brewing Classic Styles, 2007, p. 9), although simple enough in theory, is completely and utterly dependent on the backbone of sound brewing techniques. Without healthy yeast and solid sanitation practices, this simple brew, without any rugs to sweep anything under, is very unforgiving. Without TLC, it will not shine as it is supposed to. The blonde ale's potential is only realized when its brewer has mastered the very foundation, the pillars of this noble art that is home brewing.
Now, that being said, anyone have any advice as I embark on brewing my first blonde ale?
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
introduction
hello all. all the previous posts were brought over from my "notes" in my facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/david.j.halpin1?ref=profile). by urging from my wife i decided to make an official blog.
i have been making beer for about six months now. there is a book out there, Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John J. Palmer that i am using as i guide. in the book are recipes for 80 styles of beer. the recipes are broken down into three categories: beginner, intermediate and advanced. within each category, the styles are listed alphabeticly.
my goal, is to brew every one of these recipes, in order alphabetically, from easiest to most advanced. so far, i have been brewing beer about every three weeks. if i can keep up this pace, i will be on track to finish Brewing Classic Styles in about another four years. the finished product, blog-wise anyway, will be a sort of "julie and julia"-esque type of thing, but for beer. beermaking-wise, it will be a journey through the landscape of craft brewing, an art all but lost in the united states due to prohibition, now making a comeback just within the last 20-30 years.
in addition to john and jamil's Brewing Classic Styles, my beer brewing journey will be accompanied by the brewing bible, john palmer's How to Brew, an invaluable resource to all homebrewers. palmer's engineering and metallurgy backgrounds give great insight into the beer making process. i will also be using the latest version of the BJCP Styles Guidelines for Beer, Mead, and Cider to inform and enhance the decisions i make regarding the recipes i come across in Brewing Classic Styles.
in this process i will attempt to entertain and inform. being highly opinionated and quick to irrational avenues of thought, i will in no way shape or form be attempting to persuade you in any direction. i hope everyone enjoys what they read.
cheers!
i have been making beer for about six months now. there is a book out there, Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John J. Palmer that i am using as i guide. in the book are recipes for 80 styles of beer. the recipes are broken down into three categories: beginner, intermediate and advanced. within each category, the styles are listed alphabeticly.
my goal, is to brew every one of these recipes, in order alphabetically, from easiest to most advanced. so far, i have been brewing beer about every three weeks. if i can keep up this pace, i will be on track to finish Brewing Classic Styles in about another four years. the finished product, blog-wise anyway, will be a sort of "julie and julia"-esque type of thing, but for beer. beermaking-wise, it will be a journey through the landscape of craft brewing, an art all but lost in the united states due to prohibition, now making a comeback just within the last 20-30 years.
in addition to john and jamil's Brewing Classic Styles, my beer brewing journey will be accompanied by the brewing bible, john palmer's How to Brew, an invaluable resource to all homebrewers. palmer's engineering and metallurgy backgrounds give great insight into the beer making process. i will also be using the latest version of the BJCP Styles Guidelines for Beer, Mead, and Cider to inform and enhance the decisions i make regarding the recipes i come across in Brewing Classic Styles.
in this process i will attempt to entertain and inform. being highly opinionated and quick to irrational avenues of thought, i will in no way shape or form be attempting to persuade you in any direction. i hope everyone enjoys what they read.
cheers!
delicious dish: original post 3/19/2010
here's a dish for all you people out there who like to eat. i just made it today for lunch. probably makes about 8-10 servings. can be refrigerated for later use. extremly healthy, tastes great, inexpensive AND (drum roll please), no animal products what-so-ever . the main ingredient is quinoa (http://www.quinoa.net/). if you dont know what it is, try it. you wont be disapointed.
ingredients:
1 c. quinoa
2 c. H2O
a couple carrots
some celery
half an onion or so
olive oil
garlic
salt
pepper
pine nuts (optional)
first, rinse the quinoa and drain as well as possible. while the grain drains, put a skillet on the stove over medium heat. when the skillet is hot, put the drained grain into the skillet. it will hiss at you and maybe pop a little bit. don't be alarmed. that's just what happens when water hits a hot pan. spread the grain evenly over the surface. what you are doing right now is just giving the grain a light toast. when all the residual water has evaporated and the grain is sliding around easily, you will know it is almost ready. keep it going for a couple more minutes. you should be able to smell a nutty aroma. take it off the heat and prepare it like you would rice. put the lightly toasted quinoa in a two quart pot with the two cups of water, and bring to a boil. cover tightly, lower heat and forget for 25 minutes or so.
while we are waiting for the water to come to a boil, which really shouldn't take that long, we will begin the next step for making our dish. prepare the celery, onions, and carrots as if you were making a soup
(this is called mirepoix- pronounced MEERPWA, a quick google search turned up this hit first: http://classical-french-cuisine.suite101.com/article.cfm/mirepoix ).
see if your grain and water is boiling yet. place the veggies into a hot skillet with olive oil (not a lot, maybe a couple tablespoons) and diced garlic. season as you see fit with salt and pepper. when it is done the onions will start to become translucent and the celery will soften. take the mirepoix off the heat, and scrape it out into a bowl. set aside. meanwhile, your quinoa and water should be happily simmering away.
now, replace the mirepoix in the skillet with your pine nuts. we are going to toast the nuts as well. crank that heat up a little bit and keep those nuts moving. shake em, stir em, then let em sit for a couple seconds. pine nuts begin to toast very rapidly, so now is not a time to divert your attention. as the nuts toast they will begin to darken. when they have all uniformly begun to turn brown (not black), they are done. go ahead, take em off the heat, and place them in the bowl with the carrots, onion and celery. toasting the nuts enhances their flavor. this is why we lightly toasted the quinoa as well.
the quinoa should be getting along splendidly. if about 25 minutes have gone by, check it. the grain should be puffed up a little and the water gone. like rice, the quinoa has soaked up the water. give the pot an easy 45 degree tilt. do you see any water? if you do, the grain still needs a little more time. replace the lid and let go for ten more minutes. that should do the trick.
when the quinoa is ready, dump it into a large mixing bowl. add the mirepoix and toasted pine nuts. lightly stir together and incorporate all the ingredients. get a fork or a spoon and try it. if you did it right, it will taste delicious. the quinoa is ready to serve. it is good all by itself, or as a side. i am going to serve mine with some zucchini and yellow squash. it would also go well with any fish, beef or pork. the possibilities are endless. the nice thing about this dish is the lack of empty calories. unlike rice and potatoes, this stuff is really quite good for you. no empty calories here!
ingredients:
1 c. quinoa
2 c. H2O
a couple carrots
some celery
half an onion or so
olive oil
garlic
salt
pepper
pine nuts (optional)
first, rinse the quinoa and drain as well as possible. while the grain drains, put a skillet on the stove over medium heat. when the skillet is hot, put the drained grain into the skillet. it will hiss at you and maybe pop a little bit. don't be alarmed. that's just what happens when water hits a hot pan. spread the grain evenly over the surface. what you are doing right now is just giving the grain a light toast. when all the residual water has evaporated and the grain is sliding around easily, you will know it is almost ready. keep it going for a couple more minutes. you should be able to smell a nutty aroma. take it off the heat and prepare it like you would rice. put the lightly toasted quinoa in a two quart pot with the two cups of water, and bring to a boil. cover tightly, lower heat and forget for 25 minutes or so.
while we are waiting for the water to come to a boil, which really shouldn't take that long, we will begin the next step for making our dish. prepare the celery, onions, and carrots as if you were making a soup
(this is called mirepoix- pronounced MEERPWA, a quick google search turned up this hit first: http://classical-french-cu
see if your grain and water is boiling yet. place the veggies into a hot skillet with olive oil (not a lot, maybe a couple tablespoons) and diced garlic. season as you see fit with salt and pepper. when it is done the onions will start to become translucent and the celery will soften. take the mirepoix off the heat, and scrape it out into a bowl. set aside. meanwhile, your quinoa and water should be happily simmering away.
now, replace the mirepoix in the skillet with your pine nuts. we are going to toast the nuts as well. crank that heat up a little bit and keep those nuts moving. shake em, stir em, then let em sit for a couple seconds. pine nuts begin to toast very rapidly, so now is not a time to divert your attention. as the nuts toast they will begin to darken. when they have all uniformly begun to turn brown (not black), they are done. go ahead, take em off the heat, and place them in the bowl with the carrots, onion and celery. toasting the nuts enhances their flavor. this is why we lightly toasted the quinoa as well.
the quinoa should be getting along splendidly. if about 25 minutes have gone by, check it. the grain should be puffed up a little and the water gone. like rice, the quinoa has soaked up the water. give the pot an easy 45 degree tilt. do you see any water? if you do, the grain still needs a little more time. replace the lid and let go for ten more minutes. that should do the trick.
when the quinoa is ready, dump it into a large mixing bowl. add the mirepoix and toasted pine nuts. lightly stir together and incorporate all the ingredients. get a fork or a spoon and try it. if you did it right, it will taste delicious. the quinoa is ready to serve. it is good all by itself, or as a side. i am going to serve mine with some zucchini and yellow squash. it would also go well with any fish, beef or pork. the possibilities are endless. the nice thing about this dish is the lack of empty calories. unlike rice and potatoes, this stuff is really quite good for you. no empty calories here!
pale ale: original post 3/2/2010
Ingredients:
Muntons pale two row, 10 lbs.
Light Munich, 0.5 lbs.
Wheat malt, 0.25 lbs.
Nugget hop pellets, 0.66 oz., 60 min.
Cascade, 0.25 oz., 10 min.
Centennial, 0.25 oz., 10 min.
Cascade, .5 oz., flameout
Centennial, .5 oz., flameout
2nd generation, Wyeast 1056, 1.5 qt. slurry
Mash:
152, 60 min.
Target pre-boil gravity: 1.048
Actual: 1.045
OG: 1.053
FG: 1.013
Notes:
Ah the joys of apartment life: my wife and I live in a second floor unit. I have a decently sized balcony which I have found extremely convenient, though in violation of my lease, for brewing. I understand why this is a violation. It is against the fire code and all sensibility to have an open flame with its energy source (20 lbs of propane) under an overhang and within 10 feet of the building. At the very least, I am putting myself, my cat, my wife, and seven other residences in danger. If I set the balcony on fire, this stick building, slowly heat cured over the last 10 or so years, would go up in a raging inferno within minutes.
So yes, brewing on the balcony of my second story apartment involves a bit of risk. Doesn’t everything we do involve some risk? Getting out of bed every day puts us in harm’s way. But do we let this stop us from getting up (if you are paralyzed by fear and depression this question is not for you) and getting on with it? I would say our lives are lived in a constant state of subconscious assessments of risk vs. reward. It is what we do; it is the way things work.
Our apartment is nowhere near the office. The chance of anyone with any authority to tell me to stop what I am doing is slim to none. I had assessed the risk, calculated the reward, and was moving forward. Up until this last brew I had gotten away with my self righteous justification.
“And now,” as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”
Somebody tattled on me. I was over the sink rinsing some sort of equipment or other when I heard coming through the kitchen window, a very purposeful tread make its way up the stair. Before the no nonsense knock could even be dealt, I knew what I was dealing with.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi,” said a very uncomfortable lady from the office. “You can’t have the open flame there. You have to turn it off.” In an instant all manner of thought entered my mind.
My whole being quaked from upset. My soul lashed out against the bars of this prison we call society. “Fuck you. Leave me alone,” I wanted to say. “You’re not the boss of me.” I hate this place, no fucking privacy. Living on top of each other like some sort of twisted human coup. Gotta drive everyfuckingwhere to get anyfuckingwhere. No place to call my fucking own…You get the idea. Everything that frustrates me about my life and life in general could be related to this one minor incident. And that’s no joke.
But of course, because I am a sane, reasonable being who respects others, I replied to the nice, polite office lady, “Okay, no problem. Is it alright if I move it to the sidewalk?”
“Yes, that would be fine. Thank you.” And the polite office lady uncomfortably lumbered hurriedly away, out of site, back to where she had come from. I shut the door softly with my tail between my legs.
I had already mashed and lautered. My wort was just about to come to boil. Luckily Chessie was home. Seven gallons of hot wort would have been a huge pain in the ass to get through the apartment and down a flight of stairs by myself. We set everything up on the sidewalk outside the apartment, naked to the world. We were at the mercy of the Mormons and shitting, pissing dogs walking their people. Ah, the joys of apartment living in a lifeless city. It is a great contradiction. Inside you feel trapped, outside you feel exposed. Where is the buffer? Are we supposed to enjoy this compressed, concentrated existence?
But this is about beer, not the socio-architectural make-up of our dying cities.
Chessie and I got to within five minutes of flameout before it started raining. Nice. Instead of a little Irish moss (which I forgot to add), how about a little acid rain to help coagulate the break and clear the beer? I dumped in the last of the hops. Chessie and I struggled back up the stairs with a pot full of scalding hot wort. The troubles didn’t stop with the rain. The drill powered pump I use to circulate ice water through my wort chiller wouldn’t work. It took me about fifteen minutes, a few handfuls of hair and some straight up panic before I finally got that piece of shit to run. Turns out I just needed to prime it, that was all. Amazing how things work when you use them correctly.
So I had my wort chilled down. I was headed down the home stretch. The next step was to pitch the yeast. I had started a vial of White Labs WPL001, California Ale, about a week prior. It had been sitting for a few days at 67 degrees. I had pretty much forgotten about it, confident it would be ready for me when the time came. When it came time to pitch, I started to second guess myself. Was the yeast still gonna be viable? After a week? I had really meant to brew three days earlier. I popped open the bung of the growler I was using to house the two pint standard starter and took a smell. My heart sank. It smelled like rubber. What was I gonna do?! I couldn’t use this. The brew store was an hour away. The brew store wasn’t even open now. SHIT! Panic began to creep back into the pit of my stomach. But then I remembered something. I had a back up…
When I had bottled my IPA a week earlier I had decided to try my hand at yeast ranching. After I had racked the beer from the carboy I had saved some of the slurry in a growler. It was in the back of the fridge. If what they said was true, I could add this to my wort and I would get a reaction just as good as any yeast I had bought in the store, provided my sanitation practices were sound. It was time to put theory into practice. I pitched the yeast, cold from the fridge, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I wasn’t disappointed.
It took 48 hours. Pitching cold, into a completely foreign environment was not an ideal situation for my little yeast experiment. That last time I went to the fridge before I saw the signs of fermentation beginning to be apparent, I already was thinking about biting the bullet and going to the brew shop to get some new yeast. But I didn’t have to. On the morning of the third day I woke up and headed to the fridge. PRAISE THE LORD!! I could hear it bubbling before I even opened the fridge up. There it was in full krausen, chunks of pelletized hops careened around the carboy. A solid two inches of white foam graced the surface of my young beer. The busily bubbling blow off tube had created a nice froth on the surface of my container of star san. It was going like gang busters.
After reading up a little on yeast propagation I still wasn’t sure whether or not I could have used my White Labs starter and been fine. I felt my decision, with the success of the harvested yeast, was justified. It was better to be safe than sorry. Plus, I didn’t even want to use the WLP001. I had wanted Wyeast1056 in the first place but the brew shop was out. It had paid back in aces to save some yeast from the previous batch. Yay for yeast harvesting. I will do it now with every yeast I use. That way I will always have a back up.
Now my only problem left is to name this batch. It is the first one I feel I really owned. And the first batch where any names have actually come to mind. I am thinking either, “Murphy’s Law Pale Ale,” or, “Rainy Day PA.” What do you think?
Muntons pale two row, 10 lbs.
Light Munich, 0.5 lbs.
Wheat malt, 0.25 lbs.
Nugget hop pellets, 0.66 oz., 60 min.
Cascade, 0.25 oz., 10 min.
Centennial, 0.25 oz., 10 min.
Cascade, .5 oz., flameout
Centennial, .5 oz., flameout
2nd generation, Wyeast 1056, 1.5 qt. slurry
Mash:
152, 60 min.
Target pre-boil gravity: 1.048
Actual: 1.045
OG: 1.053
FG: 1.013
Notes:
Ah the joys of apartment life: my wife and I live in a second floor unit. I have a decently sized balcony which I have found extremely convenient, though in violation of my lease, for brewing. I understand why this is a violation. It is against the fire code and all sensibility to have an open flame with its energy source (20 lbs of propane) under an overhang and within 10 feet of the building. At the very least, I am putting myself, my cat, my wife, and seven other residences in danger. If I set the balcony on fire, this stick building, slowly heat cured over the last 10 or so years, would go up in a raging inferno within minutes.
So yes, brewing on the balcony of my second story apartment involves a bit of risk. Doesn’t everything we do involve some risk? Getting out of bed every day puts us in harm’s way. But do we let this stop us from getting up (if you are paralyzed by fear and depression this question is not for you) and getting on with it? I would say our lives are lived in a constant state of subconscious assessments of risk vs. reward. It is what we do; it is the way things work.
Our apartment is nowhere near the office. The chance of anyone with any authority to tell me to stop what I am doing is slim to none. I had assessed the risk, calculated the reward, and was moving forward. Up until this last brew I had gotten away with my self righteous justification.
“And now,” as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”
Somebody tattled on me. I was over the sink rinsing some sort of equipment or other when I heard coming through the kitchen window, a very purposeful tread make its way up the stair. Before the no nonsense knock could even be dealt, I knew what I was dealing with.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi,” said a very uncomfortable lady from the office. “You can’t have the open flame there. You have to turn it off.” In an instant all manner of thought entered my mind.
My whole being quaked from upset. My soul lashed out against the bars of this prison we call society. “Fuck you. Leave me alone,” I wanted to say. “You’re not the boss of me.” I hate this place, no fucking privacy. Living on top of each other like some sort of twisted human coup. Gotta drive everyfuckingwhere to get anyfuckingwhere. No place to call my fucking own…You get the idea. Everything that frustrates me about my life and life in general could be related to this one minor incident. And that’s no joke.
But of course, because I am a sane, reasonable being who respects others, I replied to the nice, polite office lady, “Okay, no problem. Is it alright if I move it to the sidewalk?”
“Yes, that would be fine. Thank you.” And the polite office lady uncomfortably lumbered hurriedly away, out of site, back to where she had come from. I shut the door softly with my tail between my legs.
I had already mashed and lautered. My wort was just about to come to boil. Luckily Chessie was home. Seven gallons of hot wort would have been a huge pain in the ass to get through the apartment and down a flight of stairs by myself. We set everything up on the sidewalk outside the apartment, naked to the world. We were at the mercy of the Mormons and shitting, pissing dogs walking their people. Ah, the joys of apartment living in a lifeless city. It is a great contradiction. Inside you feel trapped, outside you feel exposed. Where is the buffer? Are we supposed to enjoy this compressed, concentrated existence?
But this is about beer, not the socio-architectural make-up of our dying cities.
Chessie and I got to within five minutes of flameout before it started raining. Nice. Instead of a little Irish moss (which I forgot to add), how about a little acid rain to help coagulate the break and clear the beer? I dumped in the last of the hops. Chessie and I struggled back up the stairs with a pot full of scalding hot wort. The troubles didn’t stop with the rain. The drill powered pump I use to circulate ice water through my wort chiller wouldn’t work. It took me about fifteen minutes, a few handfuls of hair and some straight up panic before I finally got that piece of shit to run. Turns out I just needed to prime it, that was all. Amazing how things work when you use them correctly.
So I had my wort chilled down. I was headed down the home stretch. The next step was to pitch the yeast. I had started a vial of White Labs WPL001, California Ale, about a week prior. It had been sitting for a few days at 67 degrees. I had pretty much forgotten about it, confident it would be ready for me when the time came. When it came time to pitch, I started to second guess myself. Was the yeast still gonna be viable? After a week? I had really meant to brew three days earlier. I popped open the bung of the growler I was using to house the two pint standard starter and took a smell. My heart sank. It smelled like rubber. What was I gonna do?! I couldn’t use this. The brew store was an hour away. The brew store wasn’t even open now. SHIT! Panic began to creep back into the pit of my stomach. But then I remembered something. I had a back up…
When I had bottled my IPA a week earlier I had decided to try my hand at yeast ranching. After I had racked the beer from the carboy I had saved some of the slurry in a growler. It was in the back of the fridge. If what they said was true, I could add this to my wort and I would get a reaction just as good as any yeast I had bought in the store, provided my sanitation practices were sound. It was time to put theory into practice. I pitched the yeast, cold from the fridge, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I wasn’t disappointed.
It took 48 hours. Pitching cold, into a completely foreign environment was not an ideal situation for my little yeast experiment. That last time I went to the fridge before I saw the signs of fermentation beginning to be apparent, I already was thinking about biting the bullet and going to the brew shop to get some new yeast. But I didn’t have to. On the morning of the third day I woke up and headed to the fridge. PRAISE THE LORD!! I could hear it bubbling before I even opened the fridge up. There it was in full krausen, chunks of pelletized hops careened around the carboy. A solid two inches of white foam graced the surface of my young beer. The busily bubbling blow off tube had created a nice froth on the surface of my container of star san. It was going like gang busters.
After reading up a little on yeast propagation I still wasn’t sure whether or not I could have used my White Labs starter and been fine. I felt my decision, with the success of the harvested yeast, was justified. It was better to be safe than sorry. Plus, I didn’t even want to use the WLP001. I had wanted Wyeast1056 in the first place but the brew shop was out. It had paid back in aces to save some yeast from the previous batch. Yay for yeast harvesting. I will do it now with every yeast I use. That way I will always have a back up.
Now my only problem left is to name this batch. It is the first one I feel I really owned. And the first batch where any names have actually come to mind. I am thinking either, “Murphy’s Law Pale Ale,” or, “Rainy Day PA.” What do you think?
efficiency of my system: original post 3/2/2010
i have found that a ratio of one quart of water/one pound of grain has been working out pretty nicely lately. for my five gallon cooler though, i am limited to recipes about 14 lbs. and under.
according to my buddy chris green, the difference in sugar yield between the us and uk malts is nominal, about .002 parts per pound per gallon. so, the argument whether domestic two row is better than uk two row is dead to me. the only reason to use one or the other is to stay within style guidelines.
i tried to calculate my efficiency yesterday, but the numbers where not doing what they were supposed to. maybe i had the wrong formula?
i multiplied the gravity(1.045) of my wort, multiplied it by the volume of wort collected in gallons(6.5) and divided by the pounds of grain used in the mash(13.5). i got this from john palmer but the answer doesnt make any sense.
(1.045)(6.5)/13.5= eff.
6.793/13.5= eff.
0.50= eff.
unless of course, one is just supposed to use the last two digits of their gravity reading, in which case the eff. would be 21.66, in which case my efficiency is dismal if i am striving for the magic number thirty. this means, again according to palmer, either A: i am lautering too fast, or B: i am not getting a good conversion due to ,"too course a grist, the wrong temperature, not enough time, or a pH factor, et cetera."
however, if this is the case, wouldnt i have a hell of a time hitting the target pre-boil and OG readings?
according to my buddy chris green, the difference in sugar yield between the us and uk malts is nominal, about .002 parts per pound per gallon. so, the argument whether domestic two row is better than uk two row is dead to me. the only reason to use one or the other is to stay within style guidelines.
i tried to calculate my efficiency yesterday, but the numbers where not doing what they were supposed to. maybe i had the wrong formula?
i multiplied the gravity(1.045) of my wort, multiplied it by the volume of wort collected in gallons(6.5) and divided by the pounds of grain used in the mash(13.5). i got this from john palmer but the answer doesnt make any sense.
(1.045)(6.5)/13.5= eff.
6.793/13.5= eff.
0.50= eff.
unless of course, one is just supposed to use the last two digits of their gravity reading, in which case the eff. would be 21.66, in which case my efficiency is dismal if i am striving for the magic number thirty. this means, again according to palmer, either A: i am lautering too fast, or B: i am not getting a good conversion due to ,"too course a grist, the wrong temperature, not enough time, or a pH factor, et cetera."
however, if this is the case, wouldnt i have a hell of a time hitting the target pre-boil and OG readings?
a thought: original post 3/2/2010
“The comprehension of events and the delight in beauty that humanity...may derive from its physical environment cannot be achieved in a condition of anarchy (Alexander and Chermayeff, Community and Privacy, p. 35, 1963).”
With little or no regard for the natural order, the human race faces a condition of anarchy and is doomed to failure. The movement called "green" or the search for more "sustainable" ways of life is a living, real reply to the chaos humans as a species have evolved to create. Organic food, hybrid cars, green buildings, renewable energy, and the rationale behind these things, should not be waved off as just the latest politically correct fad. These ideas though marketed to us in the familiar patterns of capitalist economics are much larger than any political agenda. The green movement is a response to a way of life that has made mincemeat of the human experience. The green movement is an attempt to salvage what is left of our environment, retool our machines to work in harmony with the natural order instead of against it, and continue our journey towards omnipotence. After all, what is the point of human sentience if we destroy our chance to become god?
With little or no regard for the natural order, the human race faces a condition of anarchy and is doomed to failure. The movement called "green" or the search for more "sustainable" ways of life is a living, real reply to the chaos humans as a species have evolved to create. Organic food, hybrid cars, green buildings, renewable energy, and the rationale behind these things, should not be waved off as just the latest politically correct fad. These ideas though marketed to us in the familiar patterns of capitalist economics are much larger than any political agenda. The green movement is a response to a way of life that has made mincemeat of the human experience. The green movement is an attempt to salvage what is left of our environment, retool our machines to work in harmony with the natural order instead of against it, and continue our journey towards omnipotence. After all, what is the point of human sentience if we destroy our chance to become god?
another friday: original post 2/26/2010
the days just blend together.
one
after the
other. after the
other. after the other.
is there no halt to the slow relentless grind?
we are lubrication in the cogs of universe.
our thoughts power the perpetual motion of time.
one
after the
other. after the
other. after the other.
is there no halt to the slow relentless grind?
we are lubrication in the cogs of universe.
our thoughts power the perpetual motion of time.
American India Pale Ale: original post 2/3/2010
So my original gravity ended up being kind of low for this AIPA. The finished product is a beer with about 4% alcohol; definitely on the lower end of the spectrum. I think I added a gallon too much of water to my wort. That coupled with a sixty minute boil would account for this shortcoming. But, you know, this isn’t that big of a deal. If you like to look at things in a positive light, it will make for a good session beer. I tasted one recently, only a day and a half out from bottling and it wasn’t too bad. Once the carbonation kicks in I think it will be a real nice tasting beer. I have a sneaking suspicion though that American two row barley sucks in terms of sugar yield. This is up for future investigation.
Another issue I have about the beer was its extremely pale color. Not red-headed stepchild never-been-out-of-the-basement-pale, but more like the commi-slant-eye-gook shade. Yella. Next time, in order to combat this crime against democracy, I will use a darker grain than the light Munich I had employed before.
I also let the starter sit a day longer than I had previously done before. I was a tad nervous as to what the outcome would be. Would the yeast be viable? Would it do what it was supposed to do? Of course it did. Just like most living organisms on this planet, yeast is a hearty, diligent soul. No endangered species list for this strain. Panda’s can go suck it.
One last critique I have: my wort chiller sucks. I built it myself and it shows. I if could justify throwing the one I have away, I would. But I can’t, so I won’t. being a closed system, I use a drill powered pump to circulate a sink full of ice water through the copper coils. It works well enough. But I have too much tubbing between the chiller and the pump. This makes it hard for the pump to prime and ends up wasting a lot of battery power. I am pretty sure that if I cut out about 20’ of tubing, things will function a lot better. Alas, no one will find out until I chill my NEXT batch, the American Pale Ale.
Here’s the AIPA recipe:
INGREDIENTS
Domestic Two Row……………10#
Munton’s Pale Two Row……2#
Wyermans Light Munich……1#
Chinook Pellets, 11.5%....... 1 oz., 60 min.
Centennial, 9%…………………..1 oz., 10 min.
Centennial, 9%…………………..1 oz., 5 min.
Amarillo, 9%……………………….1 oz., flameout
Wyeast Smack Pack, 1056…..1pkg (w/ 2 pt. starter)
MASH
149˚F/90 min. (as per brewing classic styles)
Pre-boil Gravity: 1.030 + .0103= 1.040
BOIL
60 min.
OG: 1.045 + .0021= 1.047
FG: 73˚F @ 1.010= 1.016
Another issue I have about the beer was its extremely pale color. Not red-headed stepchild never-been-out-of-the-base
I also let the starter sit a day longer than I had previously done before. I was a tad nervous as to what the outcome would be. Would the yeast be viable? Would it do what it was supposed to do? Of course it did. Just like most living organisms on this planet, yeast is a hearty, diligent soul. No endangered species list for this strain. Panda’s can go suck it.
One last critique I have: my wort chiller sucks. I built it myself and it shows. I if could justify throwing the one I have away, I would. But I can’t, so I won’t. being a closed system, I use a drill powered pump to circulate a sink full of ice water through the copper coils. It works well enough. But I have too much tubbing between the chiller and the pump. This makes it hard for the pump to prime and ends up wasting a lot of battery power. I am pretty sure that if I cut out about 20’ of tubing, things will function a lot better. Alas, no one will find out until I chill my NEXT batch, the American Pale Ale.
Here’s the AIPA recipe:
INGREDIENTS
Domestic Two Row……………10#
Munton’s Pale Two Row……2#
Wyermans Light Munich……1#
Chinook Pellets, 11.5%....... 1 oz., 60 min.
Centennial, 9%…………………..1 oz., 10 min.
Centennial, 9%…………………..1 oz., 5 min.
Amarillo, 9%……………………….1 oz., flameout
Wyeast Smack Pack, 1056…..1pkg (w/ 2 pt. starter)
MASH
149˚F/90 min. (as per brewing classic styles)
Pre-boil Gravity: 1.030 + .0103= 1.040
BOIL
60 min.
OG: 1.045 + .0021= 1.047
FG: 73˚F @ 1.010= 1.016
American Amber Ale: original post 1/2/2010
Ingredients:
Domestic Two Row Malt 2-3L, 10 lbs.
Wyerman Dark Munich Two Row Malt, 9-11.5L, 1 lb.
Muntons Dark Crystal Two Row Malt, 135-165L, 1 lb.
Cascade, 2 oz., pellets
Wyeast 1056
2 pint standard starter (1 pint water per 1/2 c. DME)
Mash:
153 degrees Fahrenheit/ 60 min.
1.125 qt./lb.
Boil:
7 gal., 90 min.
.625 oz. Cascade, 60 min.
.75 oz. Cascade, 30 min.
.625 oz. Cascade, 5 min.
Well, so there it is. The second recipe I have brewed. Looking back, that Dark Crystal could have been not quite as dark. Whatever. Some things that had been missing in my previous batches got fixed. I was able to figure out exactly how much water I was using. And as such, was able to dial in my pre-boil volume. I also remembered to add Irish moss, forgotten in the previous two brews. Irish moss, for those of you who don’t know, greatly helps in the clarification of beer. It is not in and of itself the cure to cloudiness, but a teaspoon in the final minutes of the boil helps the end product.
Something else to note is water conditions. One could persue a doctorate in the make-up of the water we drink. An easy way to bypass this is to obtain a water quality report from the location in which one lives. I got mine by calling a few people who work for the water works of Henderson and Las Vegas, NV. I also could have done a little research and found this: SNWA.com. Look at the link, “water quality report.” For the purposes of this brewer, the bicarbonate/alkalinity numbers were most apropos. The water in Vegas has a very high bicarbonate/alkalinity. This is good for bitter beers. Being that an amber ale is not necessarily that bitter I decided to cut my water for this batch with R.O.( reverse osmosis) water. Basically, the reverse osmosis process relieves water of any and all mineral content. Therefore, the ten gallons I needed to get an initial boil volume of seven gallons were replaced with three gallons of R.O. water. That cut the tap water in what I thought to be a sufficient amount for the amber ale I was going to brew. No science included. Does everyone follow?
Now that I had my water minerally balanced, I needed to take out the chlorine injected by humans to make our sewage from Lake Mead safe to drink (again, no science to back this up, pure opinion). This is simply done by adding something called Camden tablets. These neutralize the chlorine in water, thus deactivating the taste of chlorine that otherwise would be present in the taste of the beer to be brewed. Enough mumbo jumbo.
One concern I had going into this brew session had been on my mind for a little while. The question I had was, “What is original gravity(OG) and final gravity(FG)?” Holy Christ. What a loaded question.
As far as I understand, water has a gravity of 1.0000. Physics aside, when you add sugar to water( by mashing grain) it makes the gravity heavier. SO, when you mash grain and then boil the liquid, one is able to measure the gravity. Original gravity is the reading before of the wort after boiling, but before fermentation. In this case, OG was 1.052. Now the FINAL gravity reading (after the yeast is done fermenting the sugar of the wort, roughly three weeks later) is taken before bottling or kegging.
If you can peel back the layers of memory that far (or just read the prior note), I stated the OG of my American Brown Ale wort as 1.0469. But that was before I had boiled it. The FG I had recorded as 1.0832 was actually the OG. Follow? Luckily, being very confused, I recorded the gravity of the brown ale right before I bottled it. THAT gravity reading was 1.0231. So 1.0231 was actually my FG and 1.0832 was actually my OG.
WHEW! You can do the math. My brain is smoking. I think I need an oil change. Anyone who wants to know, can thank Chris Reisetter for putting this information into my head. But enough about OG and FG and Brown Ale. This blog is about an American Amber Ale. Soon after brewing, I left town. Before I left though, I made sure to check that the Amebr was attenuating nicely. It was. At 65 degrees Fahrenheit the batch was going mad, less than 12 hours after the pitching. Chunks of shit were careening around and a nice foamy head had begun to develop. Fast-forward 7 days.
When I got back to the apartment after a particularly enjoyable Christmas holiday, I was greeted with a thermostat reading of 45 degrees Fahrenheit ambient temperature in the apartment. After realizing I had turned off the heat AND that all my fish were dead, I went to my fermentation fridge to check the temp. it was a rather chilly 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Shit, I thought. Upon further investigation though, there was sign of vigorous fermentation. The whole top of my 6 gallon carboy was masked with a film of brown scum. The blow-off tube was caked with scum as well. The ¾ gallon of star san solution was brown with a ½ inch of yeast cake on the bottom. I was confident that before temperatures had gotten too low, primary fermentation had occurred.
So now, a week out from bottling, the temperature od the fermentsation fridege has long since stabled at 65 degrees Fahrenheit and I am pretty confident that the American Amber Ale I made will be just fine. Cheers!
Domestic Two Row Malt 2-3L, 10 lbs.
Wyerman Dark Munich Two Row Malt, 9-11.5L, 1 lb.
Muntons Dark Crystal Two Row Malt, 135-165L, 1 lb.
Cascade, 2 oz., pellets
Wyeast 1056
2 pint standard starter (1 pint water per 1/2 c. DME)
Mash:
153 degrees Fahrenheit/ 60 min.
1.125 qt./lb.
Boil:
7 gal., 90 min.
.625 oz. Cascade, 60 min.
.75 oz. Cascade, 30 min.
.625 oz. Cascade, 5 min.
Well, so there it is. The second recipe I have brewed. Looking back, that Dark Crystal could have been not quite as dark. Whatever. Some things that had been missing in my previous batches got fixed. I was able to figure out exactly how much water I was using. And as such, was able to dial in my pre-boil volume. I also remembered to add Irish moss, forgotten in the previous two brews. Irish moss, for those of you who don’t know, greatly helps in the clarification of beer. It is not in and of itself the cure to cloudiness, but a teaspoon in the final minutes of the boil helps the end product.
Something else to note is water conditions. One could persue a doctorate in the make-up of the water we drink. An easy way to bypass this is to obtain a water quality report from the location in which one lives. I got mine by calling a few people who work for the water works of Henderson and Las Vegas, NV. I also could have done a little research and found this: SNWA.com. Look at the link, “water quality report.” For the purposes of this brewer, the bicarbonate/alkalinity numbers were most apropos. The water in Vegas has a very high bicarbonate/alkalinity. This is good for bitter beers. Being that an amber ale is not necessarily that bitter I decided to cut my water for this batch with R.O.( reverse osmosis) water. Basically, the reverse osmosis process relieves water of any and all mineral content. Therefore, the ten gallons I needed to get an initial boil volume of seven gallons were replaced with three gallons of R.O. water. That cut the tap water in what I thought to be a sufficient amount for the amber ale I was going to brew. No science included. Does everyone follow?
Now that I had my water minerally balanced, I needed to take out the chlorine injected by humans to make our sewage from Lake Mead safe to drink (again, no science to back this up, pure opinion). This is simply done by adding something called Camden tablets. These neutralize the chlorine in water, thus deactivating the taste of chlorine that otherwise would be present in the taste of the beer to be brewed. Enough mumbo jumbo.
One concern I had going into this brew session had been on my mind for a little while. The question I had was, “What is original gravity(OG) and final gravity(FG)?” Holy Christ. What a loaded question.
As far as I understand, water has a gravity of 1.0000. Physics aside, when you add sugar to water( by mashing grain) it makes the gravity heavier. SO, when you mash grain and then boil the liquid, one is able to measure the gravity. Original gravity is the reading before of the wort after boiling, but before fermentation. In this case, OG was 1.052. Now the FINAL gravity reading (after the yeast is done fermenting the sugar of the wort, roughly three weeks later) is taken before bottling or kegging.
If you can peel back the layers of memory that far (or just read the prior note), I stated the OG of my American Brown Ale wort as 1.0469. But that was before I had boiled it. The FG I had recorded as 1.0832 was actually the OG. Follow? Luckily, being very confused, I recorded the gravity of the brown ale right before I bottled it. THAT gravity reading was 1.0231. So 1.0231 was actually my FG and 1.0832 was actually my OG.
WHEW! You can do the math. My brain is smoking. I think I need an oil change. Anyone who wants to know, can thank Chris Reisetter for putting this information into my head. But enough about OG and FG and Brown Ale. This blog is about an American Amber Ale. Soon after brewing, I left town. Before I left though, I made sure to check that the Amebr was attenuating nicely. It was. At 65 degrees Fahrenheit the batch was going mad, less than 12 hours after the pitching. Chunks of shit were careening around and a nice foamy head had begun to develop. Fast-forward 7 days.
When I got back to the apartment after a particularly enjoyable Christmas holiday, I was greeted with a thermostat reading of 45 degrees Fahrenheit ambient temperature in the apartment. After realizing I had turned off the heat AND that all my fish were dead, I went to my fermentation fridge to check the temp. it was a rather chilly 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Shit, I thought. Upon further investigation though, there was sign of vigorous fermentation. The whole top of my 6 gallon carboy was masked with a film of brown scum. The blow-off tube was caked with scum as well. The ¾ gallon of star san solution was brown with a ½ inch of yeast cake on the bottom. I was confident that before temperatures had gotten too low, primary fermentation had occurred.
So now, a week out from bottling, the temperature od the fermentsation fridege has long since stabled at 65 degrees Fahrenheit and I am pretty confident that the American Amber Ale I made will be just fine. Cheers!
American Brown Ale: original post 1/2/2010
Ingredients:
Domestic Pale Malt, 2.4-4L, 10 lbs.
Wyerman Light Munich, 6.5L, 1 lb.
Wyerman Cara Amber, 25-35L, 1 lb.
Domestic Crystal Malt, 120L, 1 lb.
Centenial, 1 oz, pellets
Amarillo, 1 oz, pellets
UK Kent Golding, 1 oz, pellets
Wyeast 1056
2 pint standard starter (1 pint water per 1/2 c. DME)
Mash:
150 degrees Fahrenheit, 60 minutes
?? qt. Water/lb. Grain
Pre Boil Volume/OG, FG
?? gal
OG: 1.0469
FG: 1.0832
Gravity @ Bottling: 1.0231
NOTES:
Brewed thanksgiving weekend sometime. No idea how much water I used to mash. I haven’t quite figured out that, “initial infusion equation” given by John Palmer on page 194, of his second edition, How to Brew. To reach the low mash temperature of 150 degrees was a stretched miracle and ended up maxing out my tun. As such, I have absolutely no idea what the volume of wort I had was either. Any guess was loosely based upon calculations from a friend, based on my measurements, as to how high up the five gallons of liquid would come up to on my 15 gallon, heavy duty, restaurant style, aluminum brew pot. But enough mumbo jumbo. Obviously my method is flawed. Cheers!
TASTING NOTES:
this beer is bitter. it smells sweet. it tastes bitter but a warm sweetness resides, lingering from sip to sip. i dont know what else to say. my palate is uneducated.
Domestic Pale Malt, 2.4-4L, 10 lbs.
Wyerman Light Munich, 6.5L, 1 lb.
Wyerman Cara Amber, 25-35L, 1 lb.
Domestic Crystal Malt, 120L, 1 lb.
Centenial, 1 oz, pellets
Amarillo, 1 oz, pellets
UK Kent Golding, 1 oz, pellets
Wyeast 1056
2 pint standard starter (1 pint water per 1/2 c. DME)
Mash:
150 degrees Fahrenheit, 60 minutes
?? qt. Water/lb. Grain
Pre Boil Volume/OG, FG
?? gal
OG: 1.0469
FG: 1.0832
Gravity @ Bottling: 1.0231
NOTES:
Brewed thanksgiving weekend sometime. No idea how much water I used to mash. I haven’t quite figured out that, “initial infusion equation” given by John Palmer on page 194, of his second edition, How to Brew. To reach the low mash temperature of 150 degrees was a stretched miracle and ended up maxing out my tun. As such, I have absolutely no idea what the volume of wort I had was either. Any guess was loosely based upon calculations from a friend, based on my measurements, as to how high up the five gallons of liquid would come up to on my 15 gallon, heavy duty, restaurant style, aluminum brew pot. But enough mumbo jumbo. Obviously my method is flawed. Cheers!
TASTING NOTES:
this beer is bitter. it smells sweet. it tastes bitter but a warm sweetness resides, lingering from sip to sip. i dont know what else to say. my palate is uneducated.
things i want to do differently next time i brew beer: original post 10/8/2009
1. be more precise measuring water for mashing
in the whole excitement of brewing my first beer i kind of lost it on the whole numbers thing. i just filled up my mash tun and hoped for the best. the result was a low mash temperature.
2. mash at higher temp
so, what i will do is try to have a better understanding of the formula that will allow me to mash at a higher temp. smaller quantities of water at higher temps will do me better than a questionable lower temp at lower quantities. john palmer will help me with this.
3. ferment at a lower temp
i fermented at 68 degrees, but i think it was more at like 70. with the fridge i aquired from craigslist.org i should have no problem dialing in the actual fermentation temp.
4. ferment at a more stable temp
see above, # 3
5. add irish moss at end of boil
i forgot to do this. next time i wont. this will help my beer to be more clear. it is pretty clear now, but...whatever
altogether, aftyer tasting the first beer tonight, the carbonation is good. the body is thin, but that will be fixed with a higher mash temp. other than that, i dont see anything that is fucking up my process.
in the whole excitement of brewing my first beer i kind of lost it on the whole numbers thing. i just filled up my mash tun and hoped for the best. the result was a low mash temperature.
2. mash at higher temp
so, what i will do is try to have a better understanding of the formula that will allow me to mash at a higher temp. smaller quantities of water at higher temps will do me better than a questionable lower temp at lower quantities. john palmer will help me with this.
3. ferment at a lower temp
i fermented at 68 degrees, but i think it was more at like 70. with the fridge i aquired from craigslist.org i should have no problem dialing in the actual fermentation temp.
4. ferment at a more stable temp
see above, # 3
5. add irish moss at end of boil
i forgot to do this. next time i wont. this will help my beer to be more clear. it is pretty clear now, but...whatever
altogether, aftyer tasting the first beer tonight, the carbonation is good. the body is thin, but that will be fixed with a higher mash temp. other than that, i dont see anything that is fucking up my process.
fridge blog: original post 10/3/2009
bought a fridge off of craigslist today. the guy was actually from terre haute, indiana. he wanted a hundred, i told him id give him fifty. he must have wanted a bag of weed cause he countered with 60. i took it. he was impressed that i was going to brew beer with the fridge.
beer blog: original post 10/1/2009
so the other day i recieved my classic beer styles recipes book by jamil and john. brewing beer is all about temperature control and sanitation. this being said, i have begun to realize, a.) i need to come up with a quick efficient way to sanitize, and b.) i need a fridge for fermentation.
the first issue, sanitation, i believe is quite easily taken care of. when i brew and bottle i have decided that i am not gonna skimp on sanitizer. i am going to use five gallons everytime. this will give me eight brew and eight bottling sessions. that will last me a little while. i may even be able to get twice that, using only 2.5 gallons per session. Before i brew i will mix my solution in my carboy and leave it. this way it will be available and ready for the rest of the session. i wont have to worry about where its coming from or if i made it or not. it will just be there on hand, waiting. also, i will know my carboy is nice and sanitized and ready to go. i also am going to procure a wide shallow vessel. the rubbermaid storage bins come to mind. i can fill this with sanitizer and have room for all the various tubbing and miscelaneous brew equipment that is generally a pain in the ass to keep track of. if i have one spot that everything fits nicely into with a nice depth of sanitizer over it all i think this will cut back on stress and hassle, freeing up my mind to wander around aimlessly in a beer day dream. other brewers i know swear by wallpaper trays for this purpose. they are a few inches deep and three or feet long and about six inches wide (they fit a roll of wallpaper). perfect for the brewing clutter neccesary to make good brew.
just an aside: a buddy of mine had a suggestion for the wort cooling process. he said, "why not just create a closed sytem for the water being used in the wort chiller?" the idea being, to save water. instead of using a hundred gallons- at least- of water from the tap and an inordinant amount of time trying to cool the wort (vegas water comes out of the tap at 80 degrees + in the summer), just use five gallons of water with ice and recirculate via a cheap drill powered pump. intitial and limited debate argued that the wort was too hot and the ice would pretty much immediatly melt off and the purpose of the closed system would be negated.
not convinced by this argument and after confering with my assistant brewer, it was decided the best way to deal with this was to just have plenty of ice on hand. a quick trip to the gas station for a couple of tall boys rendered us confident with 80 lbs. it shall be noted that our idea worked beautifully. the water did intitially warm quite quickly even with 20 pounds of ice. we drained off the excess water and added another twenty pounds. the lower the temperture falls, the faster it falls which is nice. it does take a few minutes for the tempurature to drop but once it does it goes fast. we did not time the wort cooling process, but i am guessing it took 20 minutes TOPS to get to 70 degrees (with my crappy home made immersion chiller). it took 40 pounds of ice and four or five gallons of water. i would call this success. the pump cost 10 dollars at home depot, 16 at ace hardware. i bought it at ace because i like to support local business.
but that aside, back to the second issue of my brewing journey, the need for a fridge to maintain temperature during fermentation. this issue cannot be over looked. period. it is not cost efficient or even really that comfortable to try and maintain a sub 70 degree environment during fermentation for ales. and lagers? forget about it. sub 50 degrees farenheit is all but impossible to maintain and insanely uncomfortable. the only way to combat this issue is to get myself a refrigerator specifically for fermenting homebrew. some may call this extreme, i call it attention to detail. its not like a full size fridge is needed either. all one needs is enough room to fit a fermentation vessel and its related apparatus. i guess i have my work cut out for me then. craigs list, here i come. with all the foreclosures and such i think it would be easy to find a fridge for very cheap, if not free.
ahh beer, truly the nectar of the gods. hopefully i wont fly too close to the sun.
the first issue, sanitation, i believe is quite easily taken care of. when i brew and bottle i have decided that i am not gonna skimp on sanitizer. i am going to use five gallons everytime. this will give me eight brew and eight bottling sessions. that will last me a little while. i may even be able to get twice that, using only 2.5 gallons per session. Before i brew i will mix my solution in my carboy and leave it. this way it will be available and ready for the rest of the session. i wont have to worry about where its coming from or if i made it or not. it will just be there on hand, waiting. also, i will know my carboy is nice and sanitized and ready to go. i also am going to procure a wide shallow vessel. the rubbermaid storage bins come to mind. i can fill this with sanitizer and have room for all the various tubbing and miscelaneous brew equipment that is generally a pain in the ass to keep track of. if i have one spot that everything fits nicely into with a nice depth of sanitizer over it all i think this will cut back on stress and hassle, freeing up my mind to wander around aimlessly in a beer day dream. other brewers i know swear by wallpaper trays for this purpose. they are a few inches deep and three or feet long and about six inches wide (they fit a roll of wallpaper). perfect for the brewing clutter neccesary to make good brew.
just an aside: a buddy of mine had a suggestion for the wort cooling process. he said, "why not just create a closed sytem for the water being used in the wort chiller?" the idea being, to save water. instead of using a hundred gallons- at least- of water from the tap and an inordinant amount of time trying to cool the wort (vegas water comes out of the tap at 80 degrees + in the summer), just use five gallons of water with ice and recirculate via a cheap drill powered pump. intitial and limited debate argued that the wort was too hot and the ice would pretty much immediatly melt off and the purpose of the closed system would be negated.
not convinced by this argument and after confering with my assistant brewer, it was decided the best way to deal with this was to just have plenty of ice on hand. a quick trip to the gas station for a couple of tall boys rendered us confident with 80 lbs. it shall be noted that our idea worked beautifully. the water did intitially warm quite quickly even with 20 pounds of ice. we drained off the excess water and added another twenty pounds. the lower the temperture falls, the faster it falls which is nice. it does take a few minutes for the tempurature to drop but once it does it goes fast. we did not time the wort cooling process, but i am guessing it took 20 minutes TOPS to get to 70 degrees (with my crappy home made immersion chiller). it took 40 pounds of ice and four or five gallons of water. i would call this success. the pump cost 10 dollars at home depot, 16 at ace hardware. i bought it at ace because i like to support local business.
but that aside, back to the second issue of my brewing journey, the need for a fridge to maintain temperature during fermentation. this issue cannot be over looked. period. it is not cost efficient or even really that comfortable to try and maintain a sub 70 degree environment during fermentation for ales. and lagers? forget about it. sub 50 degrees farenheit is all but impossible to maintain and insanely uncomfortable. the only way to combat this issue is to get myself a refrigerator specifically for fermenting homebrew. some may call this extreme, i call it attention to detail. its not like a full size fridge is needed either. all one needs is enough room to fit a fermentation vessel and its related apparatus. i guess i have my work cut out for me then. craigs list, here i come. with all the foreclosures and such i think it would be easy to find a fridge for very cheap, if not free.
ahh beer, truly the nectar of the gods. hopefully i wont fly too close to the sun.
beer making, actually: original post 9/20/2009
well, i brewed for the first time yesterday. it went suprisingly well. there are still a few wrinkles i have yet to iron out, namely, the mashing process. i only got up to 150. i would have liked to be a little higher. but dont we all. the beer i brewed is an american brown ale. i am quite pleased with the color. the initial taste was freakin awesome. thinking about it makes me.....well, happy, to say the least.
i guess there is nothing more to say on this matter. the beer is attenuating nicely at 70 degrees farenheit in our tub. i am keeping wet towels around the carboy to bring the temp down a little more.
yeah, thats it.
PS i still love coors light.
i guess there is nothing more to say on this matter. the beer is attenuating nicely at 70 degrees farenheit in our tub. i am keeping wet towels around the carboy to bring the temp down a little more.
yeah, thats it.
PS i still love coors light.
beer making, step one: original post 9/16/2009
so i went a head and made my yeast starter today. last night i took out my slap pack and got it going. when i got home from work today it was ready to burst. boiled up some water, added the DME and a couple hop pellets and let it go for a few. meanwhile i sterilized my starter container in the oven and mixed up a solution of sanitizer. i didnt have a small funnel so i cut off the end of a one liter soda bottle. it worked great. so far, so good. the yeast is reacting exactly the way i thought it would. when it finishes tomorrow sometime i am going to add another 1/2 pint of starter just to have plenty. saturday i plan to brew. as somone who hasnt brewed yet, the nice thing about doing a starter is the solidification in your brain on how brewing actually works. in all reality, by making a starter you are making a little tiny mini batch of beer. it gives a whole new meaning to the term, "microbrew."
beer discussion, recipe: original post 9/12/2009
well, its official. all i need is my wort chiller and i am ready to go. today i went to the brew store and got everything i need.
i decided to not ferment in my bucket. i switched out my five gallon carboy for a six gallon one. i wanted six and a half but the store doesnt carry them. no big deal. if i am really that worried about it i can always cut down my wort volume a little bit. i got a blow off tube, i dont think i will have any problems. why did i decide to do this? i dont know. probably, as chris and brian have iterated before, it will just be fun to watch the fermentation.
i didnt think my store carried Wyeast, but they do. i got a liquid activator pack, strain 1056 American (http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_yeaststrain_detail.cfm?ID=5 ). i meant to get American II which has a little higher fermentation temp but i didnt read the label correctly. or should i say, at all. i was kind of nervous. when i get nervous i do things that dont make sense. like not read the label on something i am buying. anyway, im sure it will be fine.
the recipe i am using called for four hop additions, the last being a steep. i decided i didnt need that one so i only got three packs of one ounce pelletized hops each of centennial, amarillo, and UK kent golding. before i went to the store i thought i wasnt going to go heavy on the hops but once i got there and saw the selection, i said to myself, "self, fuck it." remember that line cheech marin has in "from dusk till dawn?" if you can find it cheaper,...i dont know what that has to do with anything, maybe its the crappy lost coast brewery rasberry brown talking. so what the heck, maybe i'll have a hoppy brown ale. my maltiness just may offset it nicely.
speaking of maltiness, i also got my grains while i was out and about. the recipe i am working off of called for fifteen pounds of grain. that may be a little much for my mash tun, if so i just got thirteen lbs. i dont want to have to sparge or anything, so the more grain, the better. i ended up getting ten pounds of a domestic two row, one pound of dark crystal, one pound of Kara Amber, and one pound of dark Munich.
so, what do you all think?
i decided to not ferment in my bucket. i switched out my five gallon carboy for a six gallon one. i wanted six and a half but the store doesnt carry them. no big deal. if i am really that worried about it i can always cut down my wort volume a little bit. i got a blow off tube, i dont think i will have any problems. why did i decide to do this? i dont know. probably, as chris and brian have iterated before, it will just be fun to watch the fermentation.
i didnt think my store carried Wyeast, but they do. i got a liquid activator pack, strain 1056 American (http://www.wyeastlab.com/h
the recipe i am using called for four hop additions, the last being a steep. i decided i didnt need that one so i only got three packs of one ounce pelletized hops each of centennial, amarillo, and UK kent golding. before i went to the store i thought i wasnt going to go heavy on the hops but once i got there and saw the selection, i said to myself, "self, fuck it." remember that line cheech marin has in "from dusk till dawn?" if you can find it cheaper,...i dont know what that has to do with anything, maybe its the crappy lost coast brewery rasberry brown talking. so what the heck, maybe i'll have a hoppy brown ale. my maltiness just may offset it nicely.
speaking of maltiness, i also got my grains while i was out and about. the recipe i am working off of called for fifteen pounds of grain. that may be a little much for my mash tun, if so i just got thirteen lbs. i dont want to have to sparge or anything, so the more grain, the better. i ended up getting ten pounds of a domestic two row, one pound of dark crystal, one pound of Kara Amber, and one pound of dark Munich.
so, what do you all think?
beer discussion, wort chillers: original post 9/2/2009
i have been thinking about the wort chiller because right now it is really about the only thing between me and good beer. but do you buy one? do you make one specific to the size and volume marking on your pot?
beer discusion, carboy vs. bucket: original date 8/30/2009
so this week i bought my fermenting equipment. after much deliberation and teeter tottering i decided to do initial fermentation in 6.5 gallon bucket, rack to a five gallon carboy for secondary, then rack back to my bucket which has a spigot for bottling. these choices were not made flipantly. i will tell you how i made them.
the desicion to use the bucket was based upon three things: one, ease of oxigynation of the wort. with a nice wide open bucket it will be easy to pour the wort viguorously back and forth from the pot, introducing plenty of oxygen for pitching of the yeast. short of using a pump and stone, i am pretty sure it will be the easiest way.
the second reason i chose to use the bucket over the carboy for my initial ferment is that in the future i may want to harvest my own yeast. the nice wide mouth of a bucket will allow for skimming of the krausen, which is virtually impossible with a carboy.
the third use i have for the bucket is ease of bottling. with a pour spout on my bucket bottling will become hassle free. i hate those crappy little gravity and spring pourers. all they do is clog and leak and generally are a just a pain in the ass.
i am aware of the extra exposure i am putting my beer through to things such as oxygen and contaminants by racking back and forth between bucket and carboy, but, if you are careful these things can be dealt with. in the long run i believe the beer will be better for the extra steps. definately clarity will not be an issue.
does anyone want to discuss this further?
the desicion to use the bucket was based upon three things: one, ease of oxigynation of the wort. with a nice wide open bucket it will be easy to pour the wort viguorously back and forth from the pot, introducing plenty of oxygen for pitching of the yeast. short of using a pump and stone, i am pretty sure it will be the easiest way.
the second reason i chose to use the bucket over the carboy for my initial ferment is that in the future i may want to harvest my own yeast. the nice wide mouth of a bucket will allow for skimming of the krausen, which is virtually impossible with a carboy.
the third use i have for the bucket is ease of bottling. with a pour spout on my bucket bottling will become hassle free. i hate those crappy little gravity and spring pourers. all they do is clog and leak and generally are a just a pain in the ass.
i am aware of the extra exposure i am putting my beer through to things such as oxygen and contaminants by racking back and forth between bucket and carboy, but, if you are careful these things can be dealt with. in the long run i believe the beer will be better for the extra steps. definately clarity will not be an issue.
does anyone want to discuss this further?
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