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...
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