Friday, August 1, 2008
I can never make up my mind...
So here's the recipe:
5lbs American 2-Row Malt
2lbs White Wheat Malt
1lb (or more) Honey
1oz East Kent Goldings FWH
1oz East Kent Goldings 0min
S-05 American Ale Yeast
I already had the yeast, honey, and hops. All I had to buy was the grain, and that was only $11.50, so this is nice and cheap for me at the moment. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but if I remember right this was about 1.041-1.045 OG and somewhere around 30 IBU. This is kind of in the English tradition with the wheat malt and East Kent Goldings hops, then I've bastardized it by using American malts, American yeast, and Honey. Should be nice and light.
I'm going to do something new with this batch too, besides just using my new mash tun. I'm going to do my very first step mash! Since I've got wheat in this beer, I want to do a protein rest to break down the proteins in the wheat and hopefully keep this beer crystal clear!
Ok, enough for now. I've got to get me old mash tun modified to be a Hot Liquor Tank, and then get my kitchen cleaned up. Tomorrow's brewday!
Saturday, July 26, 2008
A new Mash Tun, a plan, a pale ale
I ordered a new Mash Tun and Sparge Assembly from brewd00d.com. I got the 48-QT model, which is big enough to do 8%abv or so 10gallon beers, so it should last me basically forever (I don't see myself ever doing 20gallon batches, I like too much variety for that much of a single brew, and I don't even see me brewing more than 5-gallons of some big beers). I got this "loaded" if you will, so I had the sparge assembly installed in the lid, and I ordered the sparge faucet which I will adapt into my old Mash Tun to re-fit it as a Hot Liquor Tank. This setup should allow me to reach 75%+ efficiency, Brewd00d reports 80-85%. This will save me some money, in some cases up to $10 on grain per batch. Next thing I need to do is build a 3-tier stand for my coolers to sit on for gravity feeding!
So as far as my infection problems go... These are what I see to be the possible causes of my problem:
-Infection from the air
-Infection on the thermometer that sits in the wort post-boil
-Overall sanitization
-Infection in the Fermenter
-My Cat?
If the infection is coming from the local (as in Grand River Valley, Portland MI) air, there's not much I can do about it, except be VERY careful not to splash the wort, and keep it covered at all times after boiling, and then use an oxygen tank to oxygenate, rather than shaking for aeration.
The thermometer? I'm not so sure... it's possible though, so I will not leave the thermo sitting in the wort. I won't even read the temp for 30 minutes after boiling, I know the wort chiller takes at least that long for now. Then I'll use my small steel thermo which will have been in the sanitizer, and put it back in the san when I'm done with it.
As far as overall santization goes... I don't honestly think I've been doing anything wrong there. I've brewed a few times with other people, and so far I seem to be slightly more anal than most I've worked with. There has however been one big difference. Nobody I've brewed with has ever used Iodophor as their sanitizer! They've all used an acid-based sanitizer, Star-san or off-brand equivalent. Now there's lots of discussion on the homebrew forums about which is better, and people seem to stick with what they like with no clear indication of which is the "best". All I know is that something I am doing is not working right, so I've got a bottle of Acid-san and will try that.
An infection in the fermenter, like a scratch with some bacteria growing in it? This seems to be the most likely scenario to me, and I don't know if I think it's very likely... The only thing I can do to combat this is to clean them real good, and sanitize them real good. Theoretically chlorine is no better at sanitizing than Iodophor or Acid-san, but I think I'm going to whip up a stiff bleach/water solution to soak my fermenters, lids, airlocks etc in, after giving them a thorough cleaning.
Lastly, my cat... Now I've heard that Cats harbor all sorts of bacteria, and I wonder how much of that is present in the air in my house? I wonder if my stuff that has been sanitized is getting infected post-sanitization? Or perhaps I'm picking up the bacteria in the air during transfer? I'm not sure... but next time I think I'll sanitize my fermenter and stuff, and then let them drip outside and transfer to my fermenter outside. Then I should never have to have my beer open to the air inside my house until after alcohol forms.
So, next weekend I will put my new Mash Tun and refitted Hot Liquor Tank to use, along with new sanitization methods, to brew me up a pale ale. I've got plenty of Summit to use as my bittering hop, and I picked up a couple of ounces of Glacier for my aroma and flavor. I think I'm going to skip dry hops on this, as most of the pales and IPAs I've made have been dry hopped, and I just want to know if I notice a difference right off. Since Summit and Glacier are both low-cohumulone hops (cohumulone being the compound in hop oils that causes very coarse, resinous, harsh, and strong bitterness) they should provide nice bittering without overpowering coarseness. Because of this I've taken this recipe right to the edge of American Pale Ale IBU range, which tops out at 50. Assuming gravities hit right, this should be basically 48 IBU. I'm very curious how the flavor will turn out, as I haven't had a beer with Glacier as the main flavor hops survive yet. Glacier is reported to have peach, apricot and orange notes, and Summit should be citrusy, grapefruit and tangerine perhaps, though there's not going to be much Summit flavor in this, the Glacier should really dominate. And with Summit and Glacier hops, I'm thinking I may have to dub this Frozen Peaks or something... So here's the recipe:
Frozen Peaks Pale Ale
8lbs American 2-row $12
1lb Victory Malt $2
.5lb Crystal 40L $1
9.5lbs Grain $15
.5oz Summit 16.7% FWH $0
1oz Glacier 7.4% 15min $2.50
1oz Glacier 7.4% 0min $2.50
2.5oz Hops $5
2-packets US-05 $4
9 gallons Absopure Spring Water $11
Total cost: $35 (not including propane, maybe another $5?)
Now I should get a OG of about 1.051 with 75% efficiency, and if I do well I could end at 1.056 with 82% efficiency or so. To achieve 1.051 on my old mash tun would require an additional 3.5 lbs of base malt. Since this recipe is using the American 2-Row, it's only saving me $5.25. However, if this was Maris Otter, it would be $7 savings (and if I, for example, brew a Maris Otter based Barleywine at about 10%, this new mash tun will save me at least $13). In relation to buying beer then... I'm about breaking even on this batch. A case of Samuel Adams might run me $30, plus tax and deposit. This should be a better (read: more flavorful, more grain and hops per gallon) beer than SABL, so I might equate this closer to Sierra Nevada or Founders Pale Ale. The Founder's could run me closer to $40 a case, so I'm doing pretty good there. And, theoretically, I should end up with close to a sixer more than a case of beer in a 5 gallon batch. To cut costs, I think my next step is water filtering, and trying the tap water in Portland. Maybe I can find someone a the club who has a filter I can borrow for a trial batch.
So my future brewer expansion plans look like this:
1. Build wood stand for HLT and MT for gravity sparging, kind of like these setups. This will be made of 2x4s and maybe 4x4 legs. I'll have to decide if I want the mash tun to be high enough to drain into the kettle right on the burner, or if I can drain to a kettle on the ground and go from there. It'll depend on exactly what height I decide I want my mash tun at. I don't want to have to bend over to stir, or climb anything to fill my HLT... but I also don't want to have to pick up a nearly 55-lb full kettle if I don't have to.
2. I might try to find a decent water filtering solution after this, because I think using filtered tap water will be my next big savings. I don't know what my exact price per gallon is on my tap water, but I'm sure it's less than the $1.19 or whatever that I spend on spring water, as my water bill is only $20 a month or so for the whole house. so I figure a water filter, if the water is acceptable, should save me at least another $8 a batch.
3. I think next will be oxygenation. I can get my wort all oxygenated so the yeast start fast and fully ferment with zero risk of infection with an oxygenation system. There's a couple of options, using either an air pump and filter, disposable oxygen tanks and cheap regulator, or "normal" refillable oxygen tanks and expensive regulators. All systems use an air-stone, like in an aquarium, to deliver the O2 into the wort. I tend to think I would go with a refillable O2 tank, so that someday I can upgrade to inline oxygenation, when I got to inline cooling, without having to buy a new tank.
4. After that will be my 2nd wort chiller for my pre-chiller setup I discussed in another post.
5. Then, I will likely try to get a bigger propane tank! Heating my strike and sparge water on the stove is cool and all, but eventually I want to this be an entirely outdoors operation. So I need a bigger tank so I don't have to fill up as often.
6. Next perhaps will be a new boil kettle, one with a spigot and ball valve. This will be in preparation for future upgrades to the cooling, oxygenation and transfer systems. Once I've got spigots on my HLT, MT, and Kettle, I'm ready to add pumps, counterflow chillers, and inline oxygenation. Then my brewery will need to be put an on all inclusive cart, since I won't need gravity anymore. Sweet =)
Friday, July 25, 2008
The Worst
I'm going to have to ask somebody to come brew a batch of beer at my place with me. I don't even know what in the hell else to do! If I continue to do this crappy, I'm going to have to quit. I simply can't afford to waste $25 on a batch of vinegar every two weeks. Not to mention investment in new equipment and such...
Monday, July 21, 2008
Quick Mild Update
To lower the temp some, I just got a towel wet and wrapped it around the bucket and put a fan on it. This very quickly brought the exterior temp of the fermenter down to 66F. I left it like this for about 6 hours, and then pulled the towel off. The exterior remained at 66F the whole time, and 4 hours later was still at 66F. Couldn't ask for much more! In the future, I may just cool to about 72F (as the last few degrees are the slowest) and then use the towel after pitching to lower it the rest of the way, this was pretty effective.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
American Mild
9lbs Maris Otter
1lb Flaked Corn
1/2lb Roasted Barley
1/4oz Summit First Wort Hop
1/8oz Summit 60min
With my low efficiencies, this should've yielded me 1.039 and about 27 IBU. I got 1.041 or so, which means that even if my efficiency is low, I can at least reproduce it consistently.
The Summit hops are new for me. They're a high alpha acid, and low co-humulone, so they should give a nice smooth bitterness. They're supposed to have a citrusy, tangerine like character. I'm hoping that I don't get too much flavor out of these, as the style shouldn't have much, but it won't be a problem if there's some small American citrusy hop character. I got 4 ounces of these for helping out at my local brewery, these are what the Brewmaster there, Scott Isham, uses as the bittering hop in his American Pale Ale, which I'm rather fond of. So we'll see how it is in an "American Mild".
So the brewday went well. I only had one minor problem the whole day... I put the wort chiller in the boil a few minutes before it was done, and either I did it too soon, or that's just not as good an idea as it seems with my chiller. The plastic tubing got pretty warm, swollen, and started to leak. I managed to get the clamps tightened down, so it seemed to be no problem.
I hit my gravities pretty much right on. Pre-boil gravity was about 1.030, and my OG post-boil was 1.041 or so. I probably could've actually gotten a little more gravity out of this, it seems that I used too much sparge water in the my second batch sparge. So I ended up with about an extra gallon of wort. Oh well
The beer smells nice and roasty, nutty, and toasty. Tastes pretty good too, perhaps a bit too much roast, but the bitterness was nice and I think this should be pretty tasty after the yeast adds it's character.
Finally a picture of my new kettle. I like it, much sturdier than the aluminum pot. It's a bit wider around, so I have to start with more wort, but that's no big deal. It's a lot easier to prevent boilovers in this kette, and that's really the major reason I got it.
And I did something else different today. I racked my beer out of the kettle and into the fermenter, I really should've done this in conjuction with some irish moss, and then made a big whirlpool with the wort after chilling. I did manage to avoid a fair amount of the trub though, and this should theoretically help with chill haze, even though chill haze doesn't really bother me.
If this turns out good, and doesn't dissapear too fast, then I will take this to my Father's wedding in August. I think at least a few people there will want to try it. So let's hope it's good!
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
What am I doing wrong?
I decided when I started brewing all-grain, I would kind of start my count over. But that's no good, b/c if I do that I'm at 0 for 3, counting through the first try of Colin's Colsch (I still have a chance with Colin's Colsch-2)
I never posted about this b/c I was so frustrated, upset, and embarassed by it (I don't know a single other homebrewer who has ever had as bad a record as me...), but both Repale (the River Grand Brown) and my River Rat Rye got infected or something in the keg. I hadn't had a pint off either of these in a week or two (and this has been a while now) and one day when I went to draw a pint... they both tasted like crap! Cidery, bitter (not in the good way), tart... really gross. I don't know what in the hell happened to them. My only guess at this point is that my taps were dirty/unsanitary and something was able to infect the beer from there.
So I consider those two partial losses. I made it to finished beer, and just didn't handle them right afterwards. I have a new plan for operation my kegs for at least the next couple of batches, hopefully to eliminate this problem. I bought a hand held faucet and a new section of tap line. I've filled a keg with sanitizer solution, and plan on getting a spray bottle I can fill with some kind of alcohol-based disinfectant (I think I know where I can get some 90% ethanol...). I will use this new faucet exclusively for the next couple of kegs. It will be stored disconnected, and I will flush it with sanitizer before using. I will also spray all connections with the alcohol before connecting the faucet to the beer-keg. After pouring beers, or if switching from one keg to the other, I will flush the faucet and spray the connections again. As I'm thinking about it... I'm also thinking I need to tear apart the hardware in the fridge and clean and sanitize everyhting there too. So hopefully with some more rigorous handling I can eliminate that problem.
However... Colin's Colsch round 1 is now... crap. It seems to have gotten infected sometime prior to going into primary. Chances are that it got infected during the cooling procedure, or while pouring into the fermenter. I think my sanitization process is fine, though I could perhaps 'polish' my process a bit (I don't have a designated sanitary drying location for example...), so I'm guessing that I got the infections while it was cooling, which took a while. To combat this I need to do one or two of these: Cool faster, cool more carefully.
Cooling Carefully... well I don't know what to do there. I sanitize my wort chiller before using, though I could just stick it into the boil before it's done, I could really use a hose to get the water to my kettle then as right now I have to carry the kettle to a spigot. Actually, I think I should probably get a hose, but I think I need one on the drain side to, then I could drain into the street. Normally I leave my floating thermometer in the wort while it chills, and use that to stir the wort a bit, perhaps I need to be more careful not to splash? But this batch was no different than the Repale and River Rat...
Which brings me to cooling. Repale and River Rat both cooled faster, it was cooler outside (Repale even had snow to help). There's lots that I could do to help cooling though... with that I'm basically limited by money. There's 3 main types of wort chillers. I have a single immersion chiller. One option that I am considering is getting a 2nd chiller so I can do a pre-chiller. This is when you use 2 immersion chillers in a line, and the first chiller is in a bucket of ice-water. This pre-chills the coolant water down to around 40F or so, hopefully, translating to faster cooling. A counterflow chiller would be pretty cool, but they're a bit expensive. I've seen them and plate chillers in action, and it is awesome to see wort get chilled immediately, you just drain your beer from you kettle through them and it comes out chilled! Well it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea. I think the pre-chiller is more cost effective though.
Something else I've considered doing is having somebody come and brew with me some day while I'm brewing. Somebody with lots of experience, who can tell me if I'm doing something wrong, risking my beer at any point. I've brewed with others before, but nobody's ever come watch me do my brew-day on my own.
It's tough though... this is something I REALLY enjoy, enough of a passion to want to make a career out of it. And yet, I fail half the time. I've sunk a lot of time, money, and effort into this, and I'm currently the most failingest homebrewer I know. This is like wanting to be a professional tennis player, but losing every single game, set, and match you've ever played! (No I don't lose every batch... but I've never met a homebrewer who's lost more!) I get so frustrating that I want to give up sometimes... it seems like if I was meant to brew, I wouldn't do so bad.
Ah well... I've got some plans on what to work on to prevent this in the future. Just the fact that I'm still willing to work on making this happen, produce new recipes, brew new beer (I'm thinking about a mild ale this weekend, real cheap and real quick) proves to myself that I've got the determination. I just need to keep brewing!
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Gravity
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Wild!
Currently, I am drinking a Rodenbach, a red ale from the Flanders region of Europe (on the boundary of France, Netherlands, and Germany). The sour in this beer is awesome, not a mouth-puckering sour, but smoothly sweet and sour. It's really a treat. Another sour beer that I have tried and REALLY enjoyed was Festina Peche from Dogfish Head. Festina Peche was a Berliner Weisse (sour, light German wheat beer) fermented with peaches.
In the Flanders region of Europe, and in Belgium, many sour beers are produced through spontaneous fermentation, in other words they let the natural yeast and bacteria in the air "infect" their beer and ferment it. In this case, the infection can come from many agents: Saccharomyces (regular beer yeast), Brettanomyces (another yeast), Lactobacillus (bacteria in Yogurt), Pediococcus (bacteria that makes Sauerkraut), and others less desireable single-celled beasties. In the production of the Lambic style of beer for example, the cooled wort it allowed to sit uncovered for a period of time to allow the infection of yeasts native to the Senne valley around Brussels.
So this led me to wonder... Are there enough native yeasts and bacteria in the Grand River Valley around Portland for me to get spontaneous fermentation? The answer is... yes. After brewing my Colin's Colsch recipe the second time last Friday, I took my gravity sample and left it outside all night, and in a window sill all day. As of this morning, something is causing some bubbles and fermentation to occur. I don't know yet what it is, it could be weeks before it even ferments out, but I'm very curious to find out what I harvested! So we'll see if that pans out and if I can brew a Wild Portland ale!
But in researching everything I could about wild ales and wild yeasts/bacteria, I found some good notes on how to make Berliner Weisse. Apparently the key is... DON'T BOIL! A guy had posted a recipe in a thread on BeerAdvocate. It was very simple. Do a step mash with lots of wheat malt... and then let it cool and ferment for 6 months. See the missing step? Straight from Mash, to chill, to ferment! And apparently what ends up fermenting the beer is Lactobacillus spores on the grain itself! The trick is (apparently) to mash up to 175F, which will kill most of the nasties but leave the Lacto to live. So, I plan on trying this in November. I will probably buy a new fermenter just for this, since it's going to take 6 months... but I would LOVE me a Berlined Weisse come next May or June!
I'll let you all know how my wild experiment turns out!
Friday, July 4, 2008
Mid-brew update
The mash went well. I timed it right this time, and got myself just over 7 gallons of wort, exactly what I needed! I didn't even measure the PH of anything until there were just 20 minutes left in the mash. At that point the PH was a bit high, so I added some acid to help. The enzymes that will have a tendency to produce a drier beer are more active on the lower end of the acceptable mash PH range, so I prefer to be around 5.2-5.4 in my mash.
I almost freaked out when I measured the pre-boil gravity as 1.022, that would have only gotten me a 3% ABV beer! Then I remembered you have to correct gravity readings for temp, and that sample was cloase to 160F. So I've got a second sample chilling so I can get a measure on it. I hope the efficiency was good!
Boil is rolling along, I've already averted one boil-over. Whew! I mentioned pics of my new kettle the other day... and I took some, but forgot to post them. I'll get to them sometime this week. Maybe...
Another 50 minutes of boiling, and then it's time to chill it! My yeast is re-hydrating with some boiled wort to get it started. Hopefully that'll kick-start my fermentation nicely.
Colin's Colsch... round 2
I did change one thing... rather than English Maris Otter pale malt, today I am going to use German Pilsner malt. Pils is lighter colored, so I should get a paler beer. Which is good, a Kolsch should be straw-golden colored at the darkest, pale yellow at the lightest.
Of course, switching grains brings in a new dynamic... Pils malt, especially German Pils apparently, is less "modified" than standard 2-Row Pale or the Maris Otter I love so much. Less modified meaning that less of the proteins and starches in the malt are broken down into smaller proteins and sugars. Generally this is dealt with by doing a "protein rest" in the mash, a half hour period at about 121F before the mash is brought to 150F for an hour. I've never done a protein rest... and I'm not sure I feel like trying today! (Perhaps I should've stuck to Maris Otter...) I've asked in the BeerAdvocate homebrewing forum... but it's early so I won't get a response for a while.
Oh well. Gonna go get some breakfast, and then get started!
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Next?
Saturday's smooth brewday has me itchin' to brew some more, and I'm also bummed about how my "Colsch" ended up not so Colschey, so I really want to brew.
I'm considering brewing it again this weekend! I've got the Hops and Yeast I need already, so it would just be a matter of getting the grain and water, 10 gallons this time. The only thing I'm unsure of is how much propane I've got left. I may have to go get it filled, as I would HATE to run out mid-boil.
I've been reading about brewing DunkelWeizen... and it's going to be a little bit more complicated than what I've done in the past. Instead of a DunkelWeizen then, I think I'll make another Brown Ale or and IPA.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Bubble bubble, toil and trouble
I forgot to mention yesterday that my OG into the fermenter was around 1.062. If I get that down to 1.015, that'll be about 6.2% abv. Gotta get the water right on this one next time...
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Post Brewday
One thing I learned today is that a 9 gallon kettle finally gives me enough room to boil enough wort to end up with 5 gallons. I've only ended up with around 4 gallons today, because I was using the same amount of water as I would have used for my 7.5 gallon kettle. I'll need to be using a minimum of 8 gallons total in the future, more if the grainbill is big. I need to end up with 6-6.5 gallons in the pot before I boil.
The 90 minute mash... may have ended up closer to 120 minutes. Oh well, I do like my brews dry... there were a couple of times that I forgot to reset the timer after stirring, and I think i forgot to mark down one stir. I was supposed to stir every 15 minutes, 5 times. I think I stirred more like every 20 on average, 6 times.
Pre-boil gravity was 1.036 at 100F, which should be about 1.041 or so at 70F. I think that might be right on... if I had harvested 6.4 gallons of wort. Since I only got 5.3 or so, my gravity was low, again. Even with that long ass mash... I gotta ask the brewclub about some ways to increase efficiency. Maybe a better mash tun for fly sparges.
I'm actually chilling it right now. It's take a ridiculous amount of time, 42 minutes so far, and it's at 76F or so. I want it to be 65-70 when I pitch, the closer to 65 the better. I'll let it go a little while longer.
The color on this seems right, and the taste pre-boil was good. I'm anxious to taste this as it's my first brew with the Glacier hops! Besides a porter I made, and there was little hop flavor or aroma in that, this'll show me a bit about Glacier!
Ok, I'm going to go pull the chiller, pour my wort in the primary and pitch my yeast...
Ok wow, 3.5 gallons. That's nearly 2 gallons of boil-off! This new kettle does havea bigger surface area, so I suppose that's what I'll have to work around. So I'll need 7+ gallons pre-boil to end up with 5 gallons of beer. If I had more jugs of water around, I could've used them, but I don't like topping off fermenters, I swear it's lead me to infections problems before.
The beer is a bit darker than I was shooting for, thanks to the boil-off, and may be a bit sweeter and more bitter than I was shooting for. Now I'm questioning whether I will lager it, as it's right in line to be an English Pale Ale, and a somewhat strong one at that, possible 6.5% or so. It's too late to make it more bitter, which is what I would really like, but I could dry-hop it and give it more hop flavor, but then I would loose more beer... Oh damn, it'll just be a strong Pale Mild or something. With German yeast... I guess I don't care what style it is as long as it tastes good!
So now I have to decide if I want to brew a DunkelWeizen next, or go for Colin's Colsch again with the right amount of water. Actually, the next brew may be an IPA, if I can get it done in time for the August Red Ledge Brewers Club meeting!
EASY with the GD Acid!
Even better, I should correct the Mash PH, not the water.
But no! I once again WAY over compensated. Stupid... I had water that was so acidic it could probably have eaten my skin off! Okay, in all honesty it was nowhere near that... but I did go a bit overboard.
My Mash is almost done, it did correct itself, so I'll be in good shape.
Brewday, Colin's Colsch
I cut the honey. I did some additional reading, and decided that it was not going to have the effect I desired. I wanted some of the honey flavor to shine through, and that's apparently not very likely, not to mention that it would have made the beer take longer to ferment out, which I didn't really want to wait for, I want to be drinking this in just over 3 weeks if I can.
So the recipe is even more simple now:
11lbs Maris Otter
1.5oz Glacier @ 30min
.5oz Glacier @ 0min
Safale K-97
Mash will be 3.5 gallons, 150F, 90min. Sparge with 3 gallons 165-170.
Primary 1 week, 65F or lower ambient
Secondary/Lager 2 weeks, 32F
Keg @ 40F, 13.5psi
This'll be my first brew in my new stainless steel 9-gallon brewpot too! I should have even less worry about boilovers now! I'll post a pic in my post-brew... post.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Colin's Colsch
So I decided that my next brew needed to be one of these styles. I think I might do Dunkelweizen next, but for next weekend, I decided to start out with the malt bill and brewing style of a Koelsch and work it into my own Summer Ale, for hopefully quick maturation and clean refreshing drinking.
Kolsch is a pale colored and very crisp, clean ale with German origin (Cologne), often made using only pale malts and Noble Hops. It was an answer the Pilsen's... Pilseners if my beer history serves me right, and is made with ale yeast but is actually lagered (cold-conditioned, 32 degrees or so) for a short time.
I really enjoy a Kolsch on a hot day, and I prefer it over a true pale Lager (made with lager yeast) as I often pick up on some sulfur in the pale lagers. But I wanted to mimic a Kolsch pretty closely, at first. So I found what I think is a nice little gem on homebrewtalk.com in the form of an email from a Kolsch Brewmaster at the Brauerei Früh Am Dom describing the basic method (here). It's not an exact breakdown, recipe, mash schedules etc, but in this case I think it's pretty easy to fill in the blanks. After seeing that thread though, decided that I would take as much of the Kolsch process and combine it with some of my fav ingredients, include some honey (I think a Summer Ale with honey sounds good, we'll see!).
So this is how it's going to go:
-Mash for high fermentability, 150F or even a slight bit below for 90 minutes
-I don't have super-soft water like Koln or Pilsen, but I can compensate with some acid to at least get the ph right, but use my normal water, which seems to work well
-Recipe is SIMPLE:
-7lbs Maris Otter Pale Malt
-2oz Glacier Hops, 30 min
-3lbs Honey, added at Flameout
-Safale K-97 (German ale) or my good buddy US-05 (if the k-97 doesn't show up in time)
-Primary for at least 7 days (Honey is supposed to take a longer time to ferment)
-Lager two weeks (secondary at 32F)
-Keg her up and she should be good to go! (Is it a female beer because it's a Blonde Ale?)
So this should hit the keg on July 19, in time for HOT summer days!
And a note to names and spelling... I haven't been consistent through this post, and obvioulsy I've hacked the name of the beer Colin's Colsch. Part of this is that I don't know offhand how to type the Umlaut, so if I want to spell Kölsch that way I have to paste it in... and I've seen it spelled Koelsch, and Kolsch in different places. But the beer name is a play on that, and a tip to the Koln/Cologne name for the city where the only true Kölsch's are brewed.
Friday, April 18, 2008
River Rat Rye Kegged
Speaking of my Brown Ale, my friends over at Around the keg have helped me name my beer! I was going for something "Prohibition Repeal" themed, and ended up deciding on a nice and simple "Repale". Now, I don't know if that recipe will be name Repale for good, or if it is a one-time commemorative batch... Probably depend a lot on whether I plan to re-brew that recipe again or not!
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
The beer is finally flowing.
Well I finally did it. I've been lazy and I'm a bit late, but I've got the Brown Ale in a keg, after 28 days in “secondary”.
Two nights ago, on Sunday, I moved the fermenter into my kegerator and set the temperature to 40 degrees. This “cold-crash” should have helped to drop an remaining sediment out of suspension further clarifying the brew. By all counts, it did this, as this is easily the clearest beer I've made yet, both during the transfer and in the glass. I managed to get the beer into the keg without stirring up any sediment too, which helped.
I'm shooting for the low 2s in carbonation levels, on the low end of the American Ale category. I've got the kegerator set at about 36 degrees and about 8 psi on the regulator. This is about as close to perfect as I'm going to get, as I'm limited a bit by the length of my tap line. You see, getting a keg system to balance perfectly where the CO2 from the regulator supplies the carbonation for the beer and also gives just the exact amount of pressure to push the beer out of the tap, can be tricky. The objective is to have the right amount of pressure on from the keg to end up with exactly 1 psi at the tap to push the beer with, this will result in good flow with minimal foaming. So there's this nice formula that can be used to determine exactly how long you need your tap line to be to get the perfect pressure (which can be found here, credit to Steve Jones). Except the problem is that I have a set length of tap line in this case, just a little over two feet! Thankfully I paid attention in Algebra class and had no trouble re-writing the equation in terms of pressure rather than length. When I calculated it out, I needed to end up somewhere around 7.4 psi to get my magical 1 psi at the tap with my two foot tap line. Cool, so I glanced at the carbonation level chart (also found on the above referenced page) and saw that if I set my regulator to just under 8 psi at 36 degrees, I would get a little under 2.3 volumes of CO2, perfect!
As far as the beer goes... well I like it! Slightly sweet malt up front is joined by a toasty and a roasty malt just strong enough to satisfy. The strongly toasty lingering aftertaste is a bit more subdued now, but still present. Hops are perfectly in line, simply balancing the beer and not adding too much of anything. Body is thin, overall the beer is dry. I'm a very happy brewer right now, this is by FAR the best beer I've ever brewed.
Now I think I'll put the Rye Pale ale on tap here this weekend.
And to top it off, getting drunk on my own alcohol rocks. =)
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
River Rat Rye Racked
Besides my efficiencies, my mashes have really done pretty well, in that I'm getting highly fermentable wort (like I like) and good tasting beer. I wish I had never used extracts!
So, this stays in secondary for at least two weeks, and then in a keg conditioning and carbonating for another two weeks. Can't wait!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
River Rat Rye summary
I did have one "incident" where I accidentally pushed the rubber stopper that holds the steel mesh and copper pipe into my mash tun. I had about 1 gallon of 120 degree water and 1/2lb of rice hulls in there, so besides making a wet mess, there wasn't too much loss and it wasn't even sticky. I turned the mas tun so the drain side was away from me and all was fine.
This time, I went with my conceptual "compacted" brewday, where I waited to do things like get the mash tun clean until after I started heating my strike water, or waiting to make my sanitizer and sanitize my fermenter until the last 10 minutes of boil, etc. While this got me from start to yeast pitching in 4 hours, this was not such a good idea. I set up closer to the sink this time, which was handy, but it prevented me from being able to clean things as easily, and at some times I was somewhat rushed, and I couldn't watch my boil well enough, which resulted in a boilover. Next time it'll be back to having everything clean before I start, if not necessarily sanitized.
I started about 12:30, after picking up 10 gallons (again, actually the Absopure gallon + 8oz jugs) of water, and exchanging my propane tank. The mash got underway about 1:30, and I was on the burner at 2:50, boiling by 3:02, and had hot break at 3:05. I pulled it from the burner at 4:10 and pitched my yeast 20 minutes later. All in all everything worked great.
My biggest problem today were the hops and the volume. The whole leaf hops are a bit troublesome to deal with as they soak up a lot of wort (which exacerbated the volume issue) and are hard to keep out of the fermenter, unless you rack your wort into the fermenter, and I really prefer to pour mine, I think it's much easier. I don't think I took enough of my sparge water, but that's kind of a catch 22 because my gravity might have been even lower if I had taken more. I'm going to skip dry-hops on this batch because I don't want to lose any more beer to absorption.
I need to find out what to do about my efficiency. I know batch sparges are not efficient, but they should be more efficient than what I'm getting. I might need to start showing up at the Red Ledge Brewer's club meetings and ask for some input. There's tons of resources online, but I think I want to talk to some people who have experience in person. Perhaps I'll ask the person with the strongest beer
Saturday, March 15, 2008
River Rat Rye
River Rat Rye
Grain:
7.75lbs Maris Otter
1lb Victory
2lbs Rye
1lb Flaked Rye
1/4lb Crystal 20L
1/4lb Crystal 40L
1/2lb Rice Hulls
Hops:
1/2oz Cascade 7.9%AA FWH
1/2oz Nugget 9.5%AA 60min
1/2oz Nugget " " 30min
1/2oz Cascade 7.9%AA Flameout
1oz Cascade Dry Hop
Yeast:
Safale US-05 American Ale x2
I'm using Hops that are grown in Saranac MI for my brew, at least for the brewday hops. The Dry Hops will go into secondary when I rack, hopefully next weekend, so I'll have a chance to buy some pellet hops instead of the whole leaf that I have now. Pellets are easier to deal with in a fermenter.
Based on my efficiency with the last batch, I should end this one somewhere around 1.057 and get about 49 IBU. This is right on the high end of American Pale Ale, which is great. The rye should add some nice spiciness and add to the body a fair bit. The rice hulls are just there becuase rye is "sticky" and can cause flow problems in a mash tun, but I don't even know if that is an issue for batch sparge.
I'm pitching 2 packets of dry yeast today, just to be sure, and I'm going to be much more careful of my acid corrections.
And before I can do anything, I need breakfast, 10 or so gallons of water, and some more propane.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Racking
Tonight I racked my Brown Ale, transferred it into a secondary fermenter, in this case a 5-gallon glass carboy. It's been in primary now for 10 days, but only fermenting for a little over 7. I'll leave it in the secondary for a couple of weeks. I'm using the secondary as more of an aging time, but it's important to get the beer off the dead yeast cells.
The final gravity was 1.010, giving me an alcohol of about 4.7%, pretty nice. It tastes pretty great too. Simple, toasty-sweet malt up front with a bready/chocolatey lingering aftertaste. The bitterness doesn't stand out, it's just enough to be a little bit over balanced. Nice, I like it. I'm excited to taste this one after it's aged out a bit and it's been carbonated.
This weekend, I'm planning on brewing a Rye Pale Ale. I'm goin to use hops that are grown right here in Michigan too! Saranac, to be exact.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Primary Update, and a new recipe
I've got a bit of a challenge to rise to as well. My friend Eric, who normally drinks only Michelob Light or Bud Light, has 'requested' a batch. Problem is, I've never brewed a Lager and brewing super clean, dry ales can be tricky. I suppose if I try and duplicate my mash process from the brown ale, and ferment now while the basement is still nice and chilly... Ok, so let's whip up a recipe for Erix Ale, probably to be the simplest recipe I've ever created.
Erix Ale
Grains:
10lbs Maris Otter
Hops:
1oz Sterling 5.3% AA FWH
Yeast:
US-05 yeast
Simple. Won't ever make a simpler beer I bet. Going for a blond ale, and with an Original Gravity of about 1.050, color of about 5.0 srm, and bitterness at about 20 IBU, this fits the style perfectly. This will have more flavor all around than a Macro Lager, which will satisfy me, but at the same time be (hopefully) very clean and dry so as to satisfy Eric. The first batch will just be a proof that I can do it, and I'll leave it on tap at home. The second batch I will bottle for Eric.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
It's Alive!!
Finally, nearly 40 hours after pitching my first yeast, and after pitching a total of 3 times the normal amount of yeast, I've finally got fermentation!
After moving the fermenter upstairs over Monday night, hoping that the warmer temperature would help jump-start my yeast, I still had no activity. I took a small wort sample so I could measure the ph, and found that it appeared to be in the 5.3 range, which is pretty good. So, I decided to pitch my second (and last) package of US-05 at about 6:45 am. Low and behold, about four hours later while I was at lunch, it had started! Whew, it's about time. The thermometer on the outside of the bucket say 65 degrees, which is about perfect. The fermenter is still sitting on my kitchen counter, but depending on how warm it is when I get home from work, I will either leave it there or take it back to the basement. Here's a picture of my krausen forming:
Monday, March 3, 2008
River Grand Brown Ale
River Grand Brown Ale
Grains:
8.5lbs Maris Otter
.5lbs Crystal 40l
.5lbs Victory
.5lbs Chocolate Malt
Hops:
2oz Sterling 5.3% aa FWH
Yeast:
White Labs California Ale WLP001
-then-
Fermentis US-05
The grains are in the paper bag, pre-ground from The Red Salamander. I've got my sanitizer (Iodophor) and my Phosphoric Acid for regulating ph and my test strips for measuring it in this picture as well. Today's brew beer is Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter.
BeerSmith says this recipe should fall right into the American Brown Ale (ABA) category nicely. Original gravity should be right around 1.056, color of about 20.8 SRM, and 39 IBU. I've got the right yeast for an ABA... but my hopping is not going to be typical ABA. This style should have "Moderate to high bitterness and hop aroma from American hops" (according to the BJCP Style Guidelines). I'm using American Hops, but Sterling are apparently more like the Czech Saaz than the typical Citrus-C American Hops. And, I'm only adding hops as First Wort Hops which will apparently yield a more mild bitterness and aroma than if I had added most of my hops at the beginning of the boil for bitterness and some at the end for aroma. All in all, I'm hoping for a dry-ish (to very dry) toast/chocolately brown ale that is easily drinkable with a pleasant but almost subdued hop character.
I'm going to go through the whole process real slowly on this first brewday log, for my own thorough records. After this batch, everything is else just minor tweaks on this process, so the logs will be much shorter.
I started cleaning my equipment up at around 2:30pm. This ended up being way too late to start a brewday. It took me nearly an hour to clean my equipment, partially because most of it hadn't been used in a long time and the rest was new! I'm starting to collect a fair amount of equipment...
Finally, at a little after 3:30pm I start heating my mash water. I do this on my stove to conserve my propane and reduce my time outside (it is winter after all, regardless of how warm it was). I've purchased 7 jugs of Absopure Spring Water at 1gallon 8oz per jug, for a total of just under 7-1/2 gallons, which turns out to be pretty much perfect. To start, I'm only heating 3-1/2 jugs worth, half of my water. When this reaches around 110-115 degrees, I pour about a gallon into my mash tun, to help warm the tun up, and continue to heat the rest of the water. This shortly reaches my target strike water temperature of 164 degrees. At this point, I add my grains into the small amount of water in my mash tun, in hopes to prevent "temperature shocking" of the grains. I very slowly pour the other 2-1/2 or so gallons of 164 (I think) degree water, called strike water, into the cooler with the grains, while stirring to prevent "dough balls". I must not have gotten my strike water hot enough because my mash was only at about 140 degrees at this point, and I was shooting for 150-152 degrees. No big deal, I just started heating a bit more water so I could warm it up. I ended up adding about a gallon extra at 170 degrees or so, and only managed to get my mash up to 146 degrees. Oh well, a cool mash will yield me a thinner more easily fermentable wort, in other words a dryer beer, and I like my beer dry, so I didn't sweat that too much. The mash sat for an hour after I tried to heat it up more, and man did it smell good! Smelled up the whole house like a cereal factory! I tested the ph of the mash, as I think it should be in the 5.5 area, and it was 6+. A quick couple of squirts of Phosphoric acid solved that, though I'm told it shouldn't really matter.
While the mash was sitting, I was warming up the remainder of my water for sparging (rinsing the grains). I'm also told that the ph of sparge water is somewhat important, and should also be in the 5.5 range. Well I think by the looks of the color of the test strip, it was about 3,472.5, or maybe more like 6.5. So I added one teaspoon of acid, as it's suggested to use small amounts... and that was apparently way too much, now it was off the scale in the other direction. Not knowing if this would cause a problem, and not knowing what to do, I added some pinches of baking soda to the water probably totaling about one teaspoon. This didn't seem to really make a big difference, so I decided to roll with it. Getting this water into the mash tun required a bit of shuffling though, as I had to have already drained the mash tun into the very same kettle before I could pour this water into it! So I poured this into my fermenter (5-gallon bucket) temporarily. Temperature is not especially crucial on this water, though around 170 is what I'm shooting for.
Now is time to start draining the mash. I drain a small amount into a small pot first to settle the grain bed into a filter some, and pour what I've drawn off back on top. This is called the Vorlauf. Normally you are supposed to drain until the wort runs clear, but my wort didn't really get clear even after cycling about a gallon, so I quit worrying about that. I'm guessing that my low mash temp probably got me some unconverted starch and protein that made my wort cloudy. I throw my hops into my kettle and start draining by wort on top of them. After draining all of the wort, I pour in my sparge water. This sits for a few minutes, and then I drain that into my kettle. This whole process has taken me more than 2 hours, and it's getting close to 6pm. This time of year, that's not far from dark!
I boil the beer out on the driveway. About 6:20pm I finally hit a rolling boil and I start counting down my boil hour. I've still got plenty to do fortunately, because this is otherwise the most boring part of the brew time. With some recipes I have hops to add periodically, but not this one. So instead I clean up all of the equipment I've use so far, and start a batch of sanitizer solution.
This is my cat, Maris Otter. He apparently learned that mash tuns are nice and warm, and decided to curl up next to mine for a nap after I began my boil. Fitting I suppose, since 85% of my grain bill is Maris Otter...
It was starting to get late at this point, but I had my wort chiller all ready, sitting in a frying pan in the snow by the front spigot.
As soon as the wort has boiled for one hour, I quickly cut the gas, cover the kettle, and carry it over to the chiller, drop the chiller in, crank on the water and cover it again. The combination of snow, cool air, and cold winter water made for quick chilling. I got to the mid 60s in about 25 minutes.
From this point forward, the wort is susceptible to infection from wild yeasts or airborne bacteria, so I make sure to keep it covered and everything that touches it from here forward must be sanitized.
Just my luck it started raining about 15 minutes into my chilling time. I didn't want to risk rain getting in the wort, so I had to get creative, and turned my mash tun upside down over my kettle and chiller. Worked great!
After getting my wort chilled, I carried it inside where I had a fermenter and lid, airlock, and turkey baster sanitized. I pour the wort into the fermenter, making sure that it splashes vigorously, which helps to aerate the wort.
Before putting the lid on, I use the turkey baster to take a small sample so I can measure the amount of sugar in the beer, called gravity. This wort weighs in at 1.046. A little lower than what I could've gotten from these grains, but there's nothing wrong with that. If I get a good healthy fermentation with my dry wort, I could end close to 5.0% abv.
Lastly, I need to pitch my yeast. The vial of WLP-001 has been warming up to room temperature for most of the day. So at about 7:45pm, I shake it and pour it in.
My basement is a wonderful 60-64 degrees this time of year. That's a great temperature for fermenting clean ales, which is exactly what I want. I close the lid on my fermenter and carry it to the basement and set it next to the back wall. Done! Or at least it should be...
Alas, I am cursed to never have a brewday go off trouble free. Besides my slight problems with temperature in my mash, and ph for my sparge, I haven't had any fermentation activity yet, and it's now been 27 hours since I pitched the WLP-001. Any brewers reading this may be wondering where the US-05 yeast comes in. Well, when I got out of work today and I still had not had any fermentation, I decided to run to my emergency brewing supplies store, Pauly's to buy some US-05 to pitch. I didn't want to buy the WLP-001 in the first place (US-05 is always my first choice for American Ales) but The Salamander was out of US-05. Apparently WLP-001 is much more sensitive to cold temperature than the US-05 and it seems that my wort was too cold for the yeast to start. At least that's what I'm hoping is wrong, becuase about the only other things that could keep my yeast from starting are bad/dead yeast, or a ph problem, and I could have caused a ph problem with my sparge water. I pitched the US-05 at about 5:45 pm today, so 22 hours after pitching my first yeast. It's 11pm now, so the US-05 has been in for about 5 hours, and I still have no air lock activity or Krausen forming. I'm going to move it upstairs over night, as it's still possible that the wort is too cool for the yeast to start, and being a little warmer over night might help. We shall see...
Lesson's learned? Well, make sure you strike water is hot enough and that you have more than necessary prepared. Always measure phosphoric acid in quarter-teaspoons or less.
Hopefully I'll learn more over the next couple of hours, and my yeasties will get to eating!
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Brewin' in P-Town
I live in Portland, Mi, just moved into a little duplex with my first basement which stays nice and cool, great for fermenting. The city water sucks though, so I have to buy bottled spring water.
I just recently built a mash tun, so I can now do all-grain batches. This is me doing my very first all-grain batch on my own, an American Brown Ale. The mash tun uses the steel braid from the outside of a toilet water supply hose for a "manifold," to filter the grain from the wort. That braid is clamped to a short copper pipe stuck through a rubber stopper with a piece of vinyl tube. Simple and easy, and only good for doing batch sparges, not that doing batch sparge is limiting, more info here.
I boil on a fairly cheap turkey fryer that I picked up off Ebay. It's a 7.5 gallon aluminum pot with a 50,000 btu or somethin' burner. I could really use a stainless steel pot and and a hotter burner. Maybe something like this, but then I would need something like this to heat it. Oh well, one day.
I'm not much of the creative type, so this is going to be a straight log of my brewings and related activities. I'll start tomorrow when I post a log of my first all grain brew, that Brown Ale I mentioned earlier. Man it could really use a name... I live close to the Grand River, which is always muddy brown, could be something with that.