Adventures in Homebrew

Notes to Self...

2010-06-29T09:51:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted in a super long time, and I'm sure my loyal readers are pining away for a new entry.... wait, who am I kidding? Anyways, in keeping with part of the original purpose of this blog for tracking my progress as a brewer, here's some updates and notes on what's been going on in my beer world.

The biggest news is that I attended the NHC in Minneapolis and had an awesome time. RAZE shared a shift in the Hospitality Suite with the Cincinnati Malt Infusers right before Pro Brewer's Night on Thursday, and then we had a booth set up for Club Night on Friday. I brought a keg of Bourbon Barrel Porter and a Belgian Pale Ale, and both were kicked. I met tons of fellow beer geeks, learned a lot at the sessions I attended, and sampled many, many excellent beers. It was well worth the trip.

I haven't been brewing as much as I'd like to, but I'm generally keeping the house in beer. I have a Barley Crusher now so I can buy sacks of base malt. Back in April I bought my first sack, a 55 lb bag of Belgian Pils, and used all but 4 pounds of it on a single day. I brewed a 10 gallon batch of Saison (using an overnight mash) that I split between 3711 and Brett C, a 10 gallon batch of Patersbier that I split between the Rochefort and Chimay strains, and a 10 gallon batch of Belgian Pale Ale, a DeKoninck clone that is now gone. All of these turned out great. I also brewed a 10 gallon batch of IPA with Summit and Amarillo that is on tap now and tasting really good, despite the fact that I accidentally left out 5 lbs of base malt. The first keg of this went into my new mobile kegorator that I took camping last weekend. I don't think I'll ever camp without beer on tap again!

I'm still slowly working my way towards upgrading my brewery. I just finally ordered a weldless fitting kit for my keggle so I can install a ball valve. I still need to get another burner and another pot for strike and sparge water, but those will have to wait for now. I'm hoping that once I get these things I'll be able to cut down my brew days since I'll be able to have multiple things going at once.

Finally, I'm starting to plan out my next several brews. I'm going to work on reusing yeast from smaller beers on some bigger ones coming up. On deck for next week will be Mike McDole's Pliny Light. I'm going to reuse the yeast cake from that beer on a Barleywine and possibly a Pliny the Elder clone. The plan for the Barleywine is to make a 10 gallon batch. I'll tap the first half around Christmas and then the other half will get some oak for longterm aging and will get tapped around Christmas 2011. I'm also brewing a 10 gallon batch of a Surly Furious clone to bring to the cabin in August. On the Belgian front, I'll be brewing a 10 gallon batch of Patersbier with WY3787. I'll use the cake from that on a 10 gallon batch of Dubbel or Belgian Dark Strong, the second half of which might see some cherries and oak.

ImPale

2010-03-19T13:41:00.004-05:00

Now that I am mostly through the first keg of the last 15 gallon batch I brewed, here's a quick update. This beer is calculated around 105 IBUs, definitely Double IPA range, but at an original gravity of around 1.050, it is an American Pale. I've brewed this overly hoppy but low gravity style a few times now, and I'm jumping on the Imperial bandwagon by calling it an Imperial Pale (ImPale). Despite the high IBUs, it isn't overly bitter. A bunch of the IBUs come from the 3 ounces of first wort hops, so although they add a lot of bitterness, it is much smoother than a 60 minute addition and adds a massive amount of hop flavor. On top of that there's tons of late additions for even more flavor and aroma. Here's the hop bill:

FWH: 1 oz Summit (18.5% AA), 1 oz Centennial (8.7%), 1 oz Amarillo (7.5%)
60 minutes: 1 oz Warrior (15.4%), .25 oz Magnum (13.5%)
10 minutes: 1.5 oz Summit, 1.5 oz Centennial, 1.5 oz Amarillo
5 minutes: 2 oz Simcoe (11.9%), 2 oz Columbus (14%)
Flameout: 2 oz Simcoe (11.9%), 2 oz Columbus (14%)

On top of this, the first keg was hopped with an ounce of Simcoe, the second keg was hopped with an ounce of Summit, and the third will be kegged with an ounce of Columbus. This is a pretty good beer, but there is a small off flavor that comes out in the aftertaste that I can't quite place. It is a bit more prevalent in the first keg (which only took 12 days from grain to glass) so it might be an age issue. I definitely get the same sensation from Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA. It's not bad, it's just there. I'm looking forward to having the club try this to see if I can get a better idea of what it is. Overall, though, I'm liking the concept of this beer as a session beer for hopheads.

First 15 gallon batch

2010-02-12T20:02:00.003-06:00

After my last brew session's insane cold temps (15 below at mash in), I haven't wanted to brew much, but I am getting sick of the Belgian Golden Strong and Smoked Brown I have on tap, plus my APA is going to blow any day now, so I need to brew. I'm hoping to squeeze in a session on Monday. Since I'm not sure when I'll get to brew next and we blow through hoppy beers pretty fast here, I am brewing up a 15 gallon batch. I've got 33 pounds of grain that will barely fit in my mashtun, but my keggle can only accommodate about 12 gallons safely, so I'm going to basically brew an IPA and then dilute it in the 3 instead of 2 fermenters that I normally use. Right now the grain bill is the only thing I've figured out:

17 lbs Briess 2row
15 lbs Munton's Maris Otter
1.6 lbs Dingeman's Cara45 (formerly known as CaraMunich)

For hops, I'm looking at Summit and Amarillo as first wort hops, a bittering addition of Warrior, then more Summit and Amarillo late in the boil. I've got some Simcoe and Centennial that might find their way into late additions or keg hops as well.

The APA that I've got on tap right now won a 2nd at the Upper Mississippi Mashout, so I'm pretty stoked, not to mention surprised, about that. There was quite a bit of competition in that category too, unlike the apricot blonde that scored 2nd out of a handful at the State Fair. I also won a 2nd for my Smoked Brown and a 3rd for my very young Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter. I entered 2 more beers at the Mashout, but neither of them scored very well. I got some really good feedback though, so that will help if I brew those styles again.

Assorted Updates

2010-01-28T06:43:00.004-06:00

The Speed Brew experiment that I last blogged about came and went. I brewed this on 12/19, and pitched US05 at 57, kept it in the low 60s for 4 days, then turned on the aquarium heater and brought the fermenter temps up to 68-70. On Sunday, December 27 I put one of the fermenters in the garage, where the beer temp dropped to 39 overnight. In the morning (9 days after pitching) I added a packet of gelatin to the fermenter. I racked this beer into a keg on top of an ounce of Columbus pellets in a nylon on Wednesday, December 30, set the gas to 10 psi (my serving pressure), and shook the crap out of the keg with the gas on for about 5 minutes. The beer was pretty much carbed and we started drinking it New Years Eve, 12 days from grain to glass.

When I tapped the keg on New Years Eve I was surprised by the clarity of this beer. Normally I would expect a US-05 fermented beer to take a couple of weeks to clear in the keg, but this only took 12 days from pitching. I am now a gelatin convert. Lots of compliments on this beer, BIG hop flavor and aroma, and I think I like the grain bill as well. There's a nice biscuity, bready flavor to it with just a bit of sweet caramel while keeping a dry finish. Definitely a nice session beer for hopheads, but it's not nearly as bitter as the 86 IBUs suggests. The first keg only lasted about 2 weeks!

I'm still working on the first keg of Belgian Golden Strong with the Unibroue strain. It took about 5 weeks in the keg to clear, the longest I've ever experienced, but now it is crystal clear. It is a nice pale golden color with a white head. The aroma is mostly of pears, apples, and a bit of spice, but there is also a bit of alcohol that comes through. The flavor is okay once it warms up a bit. I get a bit of fruit at first, then the spice comes up and the alcohol follows. This beer does not hide the alcohol as well as I hoped, which might have something to do with the fact that it is a bit over 9% ABV. I'm wondering now if I fermented a bit too high too early. At first the mouthfeel was a bit thick, but I've since switched over to the higher pressure regulator and that has helped quite a bit. I did get an amazingly dry finish on this one, but I'm hoping that the other half of the batch that has been waiting patiently will improve with some age on it. Flavor is pretty good, nice amount of fruit and spice, and it hides the alcohol well, but the mouthfeel is a little thick despite the low finishing gravity. Overall, it's not quite Duvel, but it's drinkable. Not bad for my first attempt at the style.

About three weeks ago I finally got around to brewing Denny Conn's infamous Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter. It was -15 when I started heating the strike water, and despite brewing on my new stainless steel brew cart, I think I'm going to wait until it warms up to brew again, that was just too damn cold. I was surprised though that after 60 minutes my mash tun didn't lose a single degree of temperature. I'll take some pics next brew session to show off my new ghetto fabulous rig. This was the first batch I brewed after taking apart my burner and dremeling out all the rust and wort that had accumulated after 2 or 3 years, and I'm happy to report that there was not a single bit of soot on the BK when I finished.

I pitched US05 with this one and kept the temps in the low 60s the whole time. I added 2 fat vanilla beans from Penzeys directly to primary 1 on January 12, 9 days after fermentation started. Took a sample after 10 days and then cold crashed in the garage for a day and kegged on January 26. I added 300 mL of Elijah Craig directly to the keg. The samples at all the stages tasted incredibly smooth. I think the brown malt is the key ingredient here, it gives a really smooth chocolate and coffee flavor that ties everything together but doesn't stand out. Now that it's carbed up, this is an amazing beer, probably the best I have ever brewed.

Finally, I've got 3 beers entered in the Upper Mississippi Mash Out, which is being held this Saturday. I entered my Smoked Brown, the Speed Brew APA, and the Belgian Golden Strong. I'm very curious to see what the judges say about these beers. None of them are perfect and they are the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th all grain batches I've brewed, so I can't wait for the feedback. This is a really big comp, so I'm hoping that I get some good feedback. Also on Saturday, RAZE is holding our first competition, Winter Darkness. I'm entering my Smoked Brown and BVIP and also judging, so it should be a fun day. I think we'll have around 20 entries, so it'll be small, but Ryan managed to score tons of sponsors so we have tons of free schwag to give to the winners.

Speed Brew

2009-12-15T17:28:00.002-06:00

Kristen made plans for New Years and I'm running low on hoppy session beer so I am going to run a quick experiment on speed brewing this Saturday. I'm still working out the hop schedule, but I'm basically going to brew a similar beer to the SMaSH APA that I'm drinking right now. Kristen loves this beer, but I don't have any more Summit hops on hand so what I think I'm going to do for this 10 gallon batch is either use an all Munich or all Maris Otter base to get me around 1.045, first wort hop with either Cascade or Centennial, a small 60 minute addition of Magnum or Columbus, load up at 10 minutes and flameout with Cascade and Centennial (I'm thinking 3 ounces at each time?), then keg hop with Columbus.

The catch is that this needs to be in the keg ready to drink on New Years Eve, so if I brew on Saturday I've got 12 days from grain to glass. The current plan is to mash around 148 and pitch US-05 at around 62 degrees. I'll keep it cool for the first 24-48 hours to keep it clean, then slowly raise the temp so that I hit 68 or 70 by the 5th or 6th day. I'll probably keep it warm for a few days to make sure the yeast clean up after themselves, then cold crash it in the garage for a couple more days, possibly with gelatin, then keg and force carb on the 30th.

What could possibly go wrong?

In other news, the keg of Belgian Golden Strong that I fermented with the Unibroue strain is still not clear! Starting to get frustrated.

Belgian Golden Strong Update

2009-11-23T08:41:00.003-06:00

I finally got around to sampling the progress of my 10 gallon batch of Belgian Golden Strong last night. Here was the recipe:

25 lbs Castle Pils
5 lbs table sugar
5 oz Czech Saaz @ 90

The OG came in at 1.076 (low efficiency still) and around 30 IBUs, I'll have to check BeerSmith for the exact number. I split the batch between two fermenters and fermented both with Wyeast VSS strains from earlier in the year. I pitched WY3739 Flanders Golden Ale (rumored to be the Gulden Draak strain) in one and WY3864 Canadian/Belgian Ale (the Unibroue strain) in the other. I pitched big starters of both at 64, where it stayed for a day or so before active fermentation began, then I let the temp free rise over the next few days to the low 70s, then turned on the aquarium heaters and slowly ramped up until the heaters were maxed out at around 80. I kept them there for the next 2 weeks or so (about 3 weeks at high temps total), then turned the heaters off and let them rest for another week at cellar temp, which is around 63 right now.

The Flanders Golden finished at 1.002, making the ABV 9.6%. It tasted dry (duh), but the alcohol was very obvious. I tasted and smelled some of the fruity esters and a bit of spicy phenols, but because the sample was warm and uncarbonated, this tasted more like a white wine than a beer. The alcohol, although it's not hot fusel alcohols, is too much in the front, so I decided that this one is going to stay in secondary at cellar temps for a while to round out a bit.

The Unibroue finished at 1.005, making the ABV 9.3% The sample was delicious already. Pear and apple aroma and flavor, a little bitterness to back it up, a little bready malt, delicious. Alcohol is present, which I expect in a 9% beer, but the other stuff isn't overwhelmed. This is getting kegged up in the next couple of days. Hopefully I've got enough tubing and fittings laying around so that I can use my other regulator and carb this up higher than my other beers.

I'm also thinking about entering some comps in the next few months. I'm really happy with my APA and Smoked Brown and want to get some feedback on my beers now that I'm building my water, controlling fermentation, and have gone AG. I'm looking at these comps in particular:

Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival

Upper Mississippi Mash Out

Great Northern BrewHaha

Durango, CO Ska Brewing Pro/AM

Finally Made the Jump to All Grain!

2009-11-05T19:02:00.011-06:00

The title says it all. I went with a cooler mash tun for batch sparging ala Denny Conn. I used a 70 quart Coleman Xtreme cooler, stainless braid, and ball valve for a 10 gallon setup. Pics are at the bottom. The first brew on my ghetto-fabulous rig was a Single Malt and Single Hop IPA (SMaSH). Here's the recipe:

24 lbs Weyermann Munich

1 oz Summit FWH

1 oz Summit @ 60 min

2 oz Summit @ 15 min

2 oz Summit @ flameout

1 oz Summit keghop (per keg)

US-05 yeast

Mashed at 150 for 60 minutes. I was shooting for an OG of 1.066 and 91 IBUs but ended up with only 1.048, putting my efficiency in the high 50s, not too good. Despite the low efficiency, the beer turned out really good! I think once I get a Barley Crusher and dial in my system I will rebrew this as a low gravity, highly hopped session beer. It's got tons of citrus (tangerine and grapefruit) hop flavor and aroma but thanks to the Munich base there's a solid malt background that still finishes dry. I really like this beer.

My second batch was another attempt at the smoked brown ale I brewed last November that was inspired by Red Hook Late Harvest. Although I got a different result with that brew, I ended up liking it a lot so I just modified the grain bill a bit (more rauchmalt, less roasted barley) and converted it to an AG recipe that looks like this:

20 lbs Rahr 2 row

3 lbs Weyermann Rauchmalt (beechwood smoked)

1 lb C60

.5 lb C120

.5 lb pale chocolate

.25 lb roasted barley

1.5 oz Magnum @ 60

2 oz Czech Saaz @ 15

US-05 yeast

I mashed this one at 150 as well. I was shooting for 1.068 on this but ended up with 1.056, so I did improve my efficiency slightly to 62%. I am really liking this beer as well. There's a hint of chocolate and coffee in there and the smoke is noticeable without being overwhelming, and there is just enough hop presence to balance everything out. I am quite happy with this beer as well.

Finally, I brewed a 10 gallon batch of Belgian Golden Strong. I mashed this one at 148 for 90 minutes and then did a 90 minute boil to drive off DMS because of the Belgian Pils malt. I split this batch between Wyeast 3864 (Unibroue) and Wyeast 3739 (Flanders Golden). Both of these strains were part of the VSS series. I pitched at 64 degrees and then ramped up over the next few days to about 80 degrees, which is where they sit right now. It's only been 2 weeks so I haven't taken a reading on these yet. Here's the recipe:

25 lbs Castle Pils

5 lbs table sugar

5 oz Czech Saaz @ 90

Pretty simple recipe! The actual OG on this one was 1.076 versus my target of 1.082, but my efficiency dropped back to the high 50s since I calculated this at 65%. Not sure what the deal is, since I double crushed the grain and thought I did a fairly good job measuring my volumes.

In other brewing news, I attended the AHA Rally at Surly Brewing with a couple of guys from RAZE back on October 10. Surly brewed what they called an Imperial Brown for the occasion and distributed 5 gallons of wort to over 300 homebrewers. In addition, we had the opportunity to drink free beer from Surly, including their freshly tapped Surly Wet, a wet-hopped IPA. I got to meet a bunch of guys from the Northern Brewer forum too which was icing on the cake. I just kegged this beer and so far it is tasting great. It was a big beer (OG 1.081) that I fermented with Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey yeast. I taste some dark fruit, alcohol warmth, and a little coffee and molasses. It will definitely get better with age.

Here's a few pics of the new AG setup:

Labor Day Update

2009-09-06T20:03:00.005-05:00

Wow, haven't posted since July! Lots of beer adventures the second half of the summer, here they are in short form.

The kegerator is serving me nicely. The big July bash I threw definitely broke it in. We killed all 4 kegs of beer that night, so apparently a badminton tournament makes people thirsty. We also ate about 20 pounds of pulled pork the same day. Way to go team! I just recently upgraded to a 10 pound CO2 tank, so I should be able to go much longer without refills, although I managed to force carb and push 8 or 9 kegs, which makes me think I must have had a slow leak in my old setup.

Went to the Great Taste of the Midwest for the first time back in August and had an awesome time. Foley graciously hosted me so I got to benefit from his connections to the 3 Floyds and Bells crew the whole weekend. On top of that I got to see some old friends from high school, hang out with cousin Brian, and made some new friends as well. We started the festivities Friday night at the Capitol Chophouse with a 3 Floyds Brewing tasting dinner. This was probably one of the best meals I've eaten. The food was awesome and the beer pairings were perfect. After dinner we went to Maduro and had beers on the Bells crew. Got to talk to Larry Bell for a bit which was pretty cool. The next day we hit the fest. Highlights: not having to wait for Dark Lord at the 3 Floyds tent, Bells Golden Funk, the Real Ale tent, the list goes on and on. I had so many good beers there from so many different breweries. I left with tons of ideas for upcoming brews.

Entered my first contest, the Minnesota State Fair. I entered an American Pale and an Apricot Blonde in the Fruit category. As expected, I did not place the APA, but I actually came in second with my Apricot. Needless to say, I am pretty surprised. The fact that there were only 12 entries in that category probably helped quite a bit. I'm almost embarrassed that I won with a fruit beer because I only brew one a year when my raspberries come in, and this year I just decided to do a 10 gallon batch with raspberries in one half and apricots in the other after coming back from the Boundary Waters with a growler of Fitger's Apricot Ale. I entered just to get some feedback on the beers I had on hand, but they haven't sent scoresheets back unfortunately. I'll update when I get them.

The last 2 weeks of August we went to Colorado and managed to squeeze in some brewery visits. Our first stop was Fort Collins, so we had lunch at the Coopersmith Brewpub (awesome beer and food, good vibe), and then went to New Belgium for a tour. This is a great tour in an amazing brewhouse, take it if you ever got the chance. I got to sample La Folie right from the tanks, enough said. I picked up all of their Lips of Faith beers for the cellar too. After camping in Rocky Mountain National Park we cruised through Boulder and hit up Boulder Beer Company. I was severely disappointed. The people here were total pricks and not friendly at all. It got worse when we left there to hit the Avery Brewery and found out that the tap room is closed on Mondays. I almost cried. I felt much better when I found a liquor store and stocked up on all kinds of beer that I can't get here. Later on we hit up Wynkoop Brewpub in Denver, had an awesome meal and beer, and then went to the Falling Rock Taproom. This bar was absolutely amazing. I had Russian River's Blind Pig, RR Publication, then Duchesse de Bourgnone. I could've stayed there forever.

I'm hoping that coolers go on sale this week because I am planning on going all grain for my next batch. The plan is to go straight to 10 gallon batches. For my first batch I'm hoping to brew a SMaSH beer (Single Malt, Single Hop) with Munich and Summit. After that I think I'm going to do the AG version of my smokey fall beer from last year, and then probably a Belgian Golden Strong and ferment half with Unibroue yeast, and then the other half with Flanders Golden ale from Wyeast. I am also seriously considering going to the dark side and starting to brew some sour beers, but I need to figure out where I would store them. Someday....

The hop yard is doing really well, but I was plagued with aphids while we were in Colorado, so when I came back the Centennial and Zeus plants were pretty much overrun. I did manage to salvage a small amount of Centennial and even smaller amount of Zeus, but those 2 plants are pretty much wasted. Next year I am going to start treating as soon as the bines are up. For some reason my Cascade plant seems immune to aphids, so I have already harvested 1 pound (dry) and will probably be able to pull another half pound or more in the next week or so. It's a drag seeing all of those hops go to waste (I had at least a dry pound of Centennial and maybe even closer to 2 on the Zeus monster), but at least I know that I can grow them well in the garden. There's always next year.

It's Finally Done!

2009-07-15T06:31:00.010-05:00

Well, here it is, the new kegerator. It began it's life as your basic 7.0 cubic foot white GE chest freezer. I spray painted the sides and top with appliance epoxy and the front with chalkboard paint. The collar is 2x10 douglas fir finished with stain and 4 coats of poly, 4 of the new Perlick forward seals with stainless steel shanks, and a fifth keg of root beer on the hump. I must say thanks to the Northern Brewer forum for all of the ideas over the last year or so since I started kegging and immediately started planning the upgrade, especially chriscose from the "Post pics of your kegerator" thread. If you check his out you'll see the influence. Had a big party on Saturday to properly break it in and we managed to kill 4 full kegs and 20 pounds of pulled pork. At about 11 pm I actually lifted up a primary of APA onto the collar and siphoned directly into an empty keg of IPA. That APA now has 1 ounce of Amarillo keg hops (from the other APA) and a half ounce of Simcoe and half ounce of Amarillo from the IPA.

It's Brewing Season

2009-06-12T20:27:00.004-05:00

After a long time with no updates, I've got lots of brewing news. We're hosting a party on July 11 so I've been trying to brew like a madman. I've also scored a new 7 cubic foot chest freezer (thank you Craigslist!) so I need to get 5 or 6 beers kegged to fill it. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be purchasing a temp controller, 5 or 6 Perlick taps, a few more kegs, and a couple of CO2 distributors. I've got a double distributor so the plan is to run my beers off one 5 way distributor and then run a 3 way distributor off the other regulator so I can have a line for a higher carbed beer, a soda, and one for utility cleaning and purging.

Right now I've got a Saison from the AHA Big Brew that I split with my friend Ryan from the RAZE homebrew club. I think I posted the Saison recipe already. I fermented this with WLP565, but had to finish it with US-05 because I couldn't get it below 1.016. After pitching the US-05 it dropped to 1.012. I was worried that it would finish too sweet but it still tastes fairly dry. It's been in the keg a couple of weeks now and it's coming around. Appearance wise it's straw colored, a little cloudy, and has a nice fluffy white head that sticks around for a while and leaves nice lacing. Aroma is yeast and mild pepper and fruit. It has a nice light body, despite the almost 6% ABV, nicely balanced bitterness, and a good mix of fruit and spice. Overall, pretty tasty, but I like Ryan's version a little better that he fermented with the French Saison strain from Wyeast.

I also kegged half of the 10 gallon batch of Hoppin Mad IPA that I brewed on Memorial Day. This beer is fresh, hoppy, and awesome! Here's the recipe for a 10 gallon batch:

1 lb C60
.5 lb C120
.5 lb Vienna
13 lbs Briess Golden Light DME
1 lb sugar
1.5 oz Warror at 60
.5 oz Warrior/1 oz Simcoe/1 oz Amarillo at 15
1.5 oz Simcoe/1.5 oz Amarillo at 5
1.5 oz Simcoe/1.5 oz Amarillo at flameout
.5 oz Simcoe/.5 oz Amarillo keghop

I brewed 10 gallons of Patersbier on Thursday morning that is now bubbling over thanks to the healthy repitch of Wyeast 3787 that I harvested from the cake of the first version of this beer. That brings my 2009 total to 70 gallons so far, which will hit 80 when I brew 10 gallons of APA with a mix of Centennial and Cascade sometime next week.

I also got the chance on Tuesday to help Tod Fyten of Mantorville Brewing Company brew a batch of Stagecoach Amber Ale. I met Tod when RAZE toured his brewery a couple of months ago. He mentioned increasing production over the summer and I volunteered to help, which I'm hoping to do once a week for the rest of the summer if we can get our schedules to match. Tod's a cool guy with many years of experience in the craft brewing industry and tons of connections, so listening to his stories was a good time, and it was really interesting to see the differences and similarities between the commercial and the homebrew process. There's definitely some homebrewer's ingenuity happening there. Plus, seeing 7 or 8 sacks of malt in a mash tun that wasn't even half full, 128(?) gallons of beer in the kettle, and giant bags of hops in the freezer was a pretty cool experience and definitely gave me the itch. Ten gallons just doesn't seem big enough now!

Man Down

2009-05-25T19:02:00.002-05:00

Where did the last 2 weekends go and why did I not brew? Kristen went to plant the big garden in Red Wing today and declared my Saaz and Horizon rhizomes dead, but she harvested a Cascade and a Centennial rhizome to put in the extra 2 mounds, so it would be nice to get a little extra production. My new hop count is 2 Cascade, 2 Centennial and 1 Zeus. The original 3 plants are all around 4 feet and growing strong. While she was there, I finally knocked out a 10 gallon batch of IPA. I went off of the grain bill for last summer's short lived Simcoe IPA (which only lasted 13 days in the keg) which was based on Tasty McDole's IPA on the Jamil Show. The hop schedule was inspired by Surly Furious. Here's the recipe:

1 lb Caramel 60
.5 lb Caramel 120
.5 lb Vienna
13 lbs DME
1 lb cane sugar
1.5 oz Warrior (60 min)
.5 oz Warrior (15 min)
1 oz Simcoe (15 min)
1 oz Amarillo (15 min)
1.5 oz Simcoe (5 min)
1.5 oz Amarillo (5 min)
1.5 oz Simcoe (flameout)
1.5 oz Amarillo (flameout)
1 oz Simcoe (dryhop)
1 oz Amarillo (dryhop)

I definitely put a dent in last weekend's birthday present to myself of a 50 pound bag of Briess Golden Light DME and 2 pounds of Simcoe, Summit, Amarillo and Centennial. I've used the Simcoe and Amarillo combo before so I'm super excited about this one. I'm going to dry hop with a half ounce of Simcoe and a half ounce of Amarillo, but I may do it differently when the time comes. The OG was 1.066 and comes in at 79 IBUs.

On deck for next weekend (hopefully) is a 10 gallon batch of Patersbier for the summer. That will make a great lawnmower beer. Anybody else get some brewing done this weekend?

What a Weekend!

2009-04-13T21:18:00.008-05:00

I had Friday and Monday off so I decided to get some brewing chores done.

On Friday I cleaned and sanitized 2 kegs, kegged my Patersbier, harvested the yeast from the Patersbier for a tripel I'll brew sometime, and built a 50 foot immersion chiller for less than 50 bucks. Copper has gotten really cheap!
I spent Saturday and Sunday putting up the new hop towers, transplanting my Cascade, Centennial, and Zeus, and planting my new Saaz and Horizon rhizomes. I used PVC for the towers, one tower per plant. I sank a 5 foot section of 2 inch PVC into the ground, then put a 10 foot 1.5 inch pipe inside the 2 incher. That gave me 7 feet above ground, so I added another 5 feet to get a total of 12. Not super high, but good enough. It does sway a little, but hopefully they'll stay standing in the wind. I went with the individual towers because I thought this would be the easiest way to keep the different varieties separate.
On Monday morning I brewed my first 10 gallon batch, an APA. Getting 12 gallons of wort to boil didn't take as long as anticipated, and I chilled to 52 in 25 minutes with my new ugly chiller (a little too cold!), but siphoning was a pain. My burner stand isn't high enough to get a good siphon going so the large amount of pellet and whole hops kept stopping the siphon. I'm going to get some concrete blocks to elevate my rig a little for next time. I'm also looking into installing a ball valve, pickup tube, and thermometer. Ten gallons took me about 4 and a half hours from dragging out my gear to putting everything away, but the siphoning and racking to primary took a half hour!

Pics:

Is It Spring Yet?

2009-04-02T20:09:00.002-05:00

Since I haven't posted in awhile, here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to beerwise.

Kicked the Oatmeal Stout keg. Overall this was a nice beer. Good roasted barley character, a little toasted flavor, and a nice and smooth mouthfeel. May have been just a bit too bitter, so I'll probably use a little less at 60 minutes. While I enjoyed drinking this beer, I got a little sick of it by the end. Not a real session beer.
Brewed the Double IPA with almost 2 ounces of Warrior at 60 to bitter. I split 2 ounces of Simcoe and 2 ounces of Summit into three piles and added each pile at 15, 5, and flameout. I was going to use the yeast cake from the VSS Imperial Blend but the starter beer I brewed and attempted to FWH for the first time, did it wrong, and mistreated the yeast somehow so it tasted too estery. I just pitched 2 packets of US05 instead. This beer did finish too sweet, so next time I'll use more sugar instead of malt to get it dryer, but it tasted drier than it measured. At 10% ABV and 125 IBUs, this beer is really deceiving and dangerously drinkable.
Brewed a Patersbier with Wyeast 3787 and all Saaz hops. I'm hoping to use the yeast cake for a tripel in a month or so.
I have converted my keg into a kettle, but I still need to clean it up and do a test run. I'm not real confident in how fast I'll be able to boil with my current burner. I think that I'll also probably need to build a new immersion chiller for 10 gallon batches, which reminds me that I need to do that soon since I'm having a Big Brew Day club event and was going to split a batch of Saison with a friend. I'm thinking about giving the Brew in a Bag all grain method a try this summer once I finish the upgrade.
Last Saturday the RAZE club toured the Mantorville Brewing Company. The owner, Tod Fyten, started as a homebrewer and gave us the full on beer geek version of the tour. It was awesome! He really had a lot of insight into the history of beer and brewing, especially in Minnesota, and also gave us a detailed talk of his brewing process. We finished it off with some samples of his Maple Ale, Blonde, and Smoked Porter. I got a growler of the Smoked Porter and had no problem finishing it.

This weekend the club is meeting at a member's house to get rhizomes, but it's been pretty cold here lately so I think we might get frozen out. I'd like to get the keggle cleaned up and do a test boil at some point too. At some point I need to brew again too, probably an APA.

Time to try a bitter

2009-02-04T21:39:00.002-06:00

I just got done making a starter for Sunday's brewday. I'll be brewing Jamil's Best Bitter (minus the aromatic malt since I'm mini-mashing with Maris Otter) and smoking a pork shoulder at the same time. Should be a good time. It's been a long time since I made a starter! I've been using US05 so much that I actually had to look back at an old blog post that I made about starters and check the Mr. Malty site. I ended up using Wyeast 1028 London Ale instead of the 1968 ESB that Jamil recommends but the LHBS doesn't stock it. Oh well.

RAZE meeting tomorrow night, woot! Lots to talk about too, upcoming brewery tours of Mantorville Brewing Company and Pearl Street Brewery, plan for the hopgrowing season, and figure out what we're doing for Big Brew Day. We've got more members trickling in, which is awesome since it's always good to talk to other brewers and beer geeks like myself. I must admit I'm also stoked that I'll be able to drink Hopslam on tap! I'm still trying to decide if it's worth dropping 16 bucks on a 6er, when I can just about brew 5 gallons for that, not a fine DIPA of course, but still, 5 gallons.

The Hopsicle IPA is tasting mighty fine right now. I just tapped the Oatmeal Stout and am drinking my first pint right now. It's a little young, but it's got a nice roasty chocolatey flavor with a little hop bitterness in the mix too. I'm happy! Here's the Hopsicle recipe (partial mash)if you're interested:

3 lbs Golden Promise
.5 lbs C60
.25 lbs C120
.25 Vienna
6 lbs Briess Pilsen DME
1 oz Nugget @ 60 minutes
1 oz Simcoe @ 15
1 oz Centennial @ 10
1 oz homegrown Cascade/Centennial/Zeus mix at 5
1 oz homegrown mix at flameout
1 oz Columbus dry hop

1.070 OG, 1.017 FG (a little high, but the bitterness balances it out), 77 IBUS, 6.9 ABV.

A Trip to the Brewshop

2009-01-11T20:52:00.004-06:00

It was a busy brew related weekend for me! I hosted the RAZE brewclub meeting at my house Friday night. Not everybody could make it but I sampled some awesome beers, saw a cool oxygen free beer transfer gadget, and talked a lot about brewing. On Saturday I took the fam to the zoo and then made a stop at Midwest Supplies. I grabbed a bunch of Warrior hops, some Summit and Strisselspalt hops, a bunch of o-rings, a good supply of US-05, a smackpack of one of the new Wyeast VSS releases (Imperial Ale - here), and a new book: Farmhouse Ales. Today was brewday, so I did a partial mash Oatmeal Stout. This was my first time brewing an Oatmeal Stout so I used Jamil's recipe from Brewing Classic Styles, although I did make a few minor changes based on what I had on hand. I also managed to rack my Hopsicle IPA into secondary on top of an ounce of Columbus hops. Now I'm relaxing with a homebrew.

I'm thinking I'm going to brew an Imperial IPA again pretty soon. I've got pounds of hops in the freezer and a fresh smackpack of the Imperial Ale yeast, so it is officially on deck. Rather than screw with a starter though, I think I'm just going to brew an APA with it and save the cake. I'll probably brew that next weekend and try out my new Warrior hops and possibly first wort hopping too. Three weeks after that I should be ready to brew the Imperial and have it ready for Kristen's birthday.

So for Christmas I got a 365 days of beer page-a-day calendar. Saturday's beer was Saison Dupont. Reading that got me fired up about saisons like Ommegang's Hennepin so I adopted another resolution for the year: learn how to brew a good saison. So far it's a pretty good read. I'm thinking about brewing my first one after the APA. EDIT: Monday I picked up a 4 pack of Ommegang Hennepin, a 750 of Saison Dupont, and Surly Cynic for research.

In other brew news, Kristen actually suggested that I get a propane hot water on demand system and build a small shed of some sort with a sink and stuff so that I can have everything I need on the brew patio and not have to make so many trips in an out of the house and back and forth to the garage/basement. I love that woman. I'm thinking an inline filter might be a good idea too. Any suggestions on what I should do?

Brew Year's Resolutions

2009-01-04T10:50:00.002-06:00

It's hard to believe it's almost been a month since I last blogged! Despite the craziness of the holiday season, I did manage to keep brewing. Since my last post, I blew the Ahtnanum APA keg, blew the Red Hook Harvest clone experiment keg, brewed my version of Jamil's Evil Twin red ale, brewed Jamil's Irish red ale, brewed an IPA, and put off brewing an Oatmeal Stout so that I can recuperate today. Details about my brews:

Ahtanum APA: Bittered this with some Nugget then added 3 ounces late in the boil (1 oz each at 10, 5, and flameout). I used the same malt profile as usual for my APA (6 pounds Pilsen DME, .5 lb Caramel 60, .5 lb Carapils), but this beer was pretty blah. The Nugget did provide a nice clean bitterness, but the Ahtanum didn't provide nearly the citrus that I expected from reading the description. It tasted and smelled more flowery to me. It was still a good beer, but didn't really do it for me. I think I'll stick to Cascade and Centennial for my APA.
Red Hook clone: This beer turned out to not be real close to the original because there was too much roasted barley. However, I really liked this beer alot. It wasn't really a session beer, but it was a great fall or winter brew. This was probably one of the most balanced beers I've brewed so far. There was a nice roasty and smoky backbone to this one with just enough hops to balance it out. Style wise, I'm not really sure what this would be. I read the BJCP descriptions and it is really a toss up between a brown, red , or porter. I'm having a really tough time deciding whether I should brew this again next fall the same way or decrease the roasted barley presence a little.
Jamil's Evil Twin: I am not calling this Jamil's Evil Twin anymore since it wasn't hopbursted and I didn't use the same hops, so it is more inspired by his recipe. I am calling it Big Red because that's what it is, a big, malty, hoppy red ale. I used .25 oz of Nugget to bitter and then an ounce of Simcoe and Amarillo at 10 minutes and then again at flameout. This beer is GOOD! Nice deep red in color, awesome hop flavor and aroma, and good malt flavor to back it up without being too sweet. When I brewed this I was drinking and inspired by Widmer Brrr and Lagunitas Imperial Red, and I think I hit the mark on this one. It will be brewed again.
Hopsicle IPA: Named this one because I froze brewing it. This was a minimash with 3 pounds of Golden Promise just to see what would happen. Bittered this one with Nugget, then threw in some Simcoe, Centennial, and then the last of my hop harvest (a mix of Cascade, Centennial, and Zeus). This one will probably get dryhopped with Columbus.
Jamil's Irish Red: Kegging this one today, haven't tried it yet. I've got high hopes though!

After increasing my brewing skills and volumes over the last year, now I'm looking forward to 2009. Here are my brew year's resolutions in no particular order:

Brew more. I would like to be able to not buy beer anymore except for when I'm working on a recipe. I brewed over 100 gallons in 2008, hoping to do even more in 2009.
Move up to 10 gallon batches. I'm having a tough time keeping the kegerator full and I think this will help, especially now that I am brewing tried and true recipes that I know I will like.
Upgrade the kegerator. Hopefully by the summer I will have a chest freezer with a collar that will be capable of dispensing 4-6 different beers. Variety is good, but this might also make it easier for me to keep the kegerator full without brewing every other weekend.

Any of my huge volume of loyal readers out there have any resolutions, beer related or not?

Happy Repeal Day!

2008-12-05T23:56:00.004-06:00

Hopefully you're all drinking right now, or did sometime today. December 5, 2008 is the 75th anniversary of the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, thus ending our nation's stupid experiment called Prohibition. So drink up!

To celebrate, I had a Widmer Brrr, a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, a 21st Amendment watermelon wheat (how appropriate), and my own Wee Heavy. I also broke down all of my kegs and replaced the o-rings, then kegged my RedHook Late Harvest clone and my Ahtanum APA. All in all, a good day.

Sunday I'll be brewing Jamil's Evil Twin with a few modifications. I'll be partial mashing the specialty grains and adding an extra pound of Munich, then I'm subbing Simcoe and Amarillo for the late hops. I'm excited! The recipe is here: http://www.mrmalty.com/late_hopping.htm.

Cheers!

My First Partial Mash

2008-11-16T21:23:00.003-06:00

I broke in the mini mashtun today with the Late Harvest Autumn Ale clone I've been working on. The recipe is in the previous post. I used 5 quarts of water and 4 pounds of grain. I think I could do 5 pounds of grain but I would definitely have to do a thicker mash to fit it in there, probably 1 quart/pound instead of 1.25. I did make a few mistakes though. First, my strike water was a little too warm - about 168 after I added it to the mash, so I had to stir for a while to bring it down to 158, which I now realize is still probably too warm. Next time I'll just heat the strike water to 160. My next mistake was getting worried about the mash being too hot. About halfway through the mash I opened up the cooler and stirred some more to drop the temp. I ended up losing more heat after this because after an hour it had dropped to 148. As a result of these, the OG was 1.050, but I was shooting for 1.059. Oh well, lessons learned. Hopefully it's still drinkable. If I get motivated I'll post some pictures.

The "pilsner" has dropped to 1.012 and is golden and tasty. I put it in the garage to cold crash it before I keg tomorrow or the next day. The Centennial IPA is tasting pretty good too, but it's well on it's way to being kicked. I am having a really rough time keeping 2 beers on tap! Any of you have that problem? I'm going to have to crank out a quick APA next weekend to rebuild the stash, I'm thinking Nugget to bitter and Ahtanum for flavor and aroma to get a feel for what it can do.

Why does my blond ale taste like a hefe?

2008-11-02T19:58:00.005-06:00

I'm sure all of my readers are concerned about what I've been doing in the month and a half since last time I blogged. Oh wait, I don't have any readers. Ha!

Since last blog entry I kicked the Brown and Mild ales, brewed a blond that I'm drinking right now, got an IPA with 4 ounces of Centennial during the boil sitting on 2 ounces of Centennial dryhops in the secondary, got a primary full of Bohemian Pilsner brewed with 5 ounces of homegrown Saaz but fermented with US05 at 62 degrees since I can't lager yet. I've also smoked about 25 pounds of pork on my new smoker. Good times! The Pils was brewed at RAZE's (Rochester Area Zymurgy Enthusiasts) Teach a Friend to Homebrew event on Saturday.

If you've been following this blog you probably know that about 14 of the last 15 batches I've brewed I've pitched US05 dry yeast. I have not had a problem until this blond ale I brewed up at the beginning of October. I've brewed something like 18 batches in the last year and really have my system and process dialed so the problem that's developed with this beer is driving me absolutely crazy. It tastes like a frickin wheat beer. It's got the same kind of esters that you'd taste in a hefe! What the hell? I pitched the yeast at 65 degrees and temps never got above that, they actually went lower, and it was a long and slow fermentation. The thing is, I've pitched US05 lower than that and fermented as low as 60 and never had a problem and still get the FG down below 1.015 every time. I think it has something to do with the sluggish fermentation but it's really weird how the flavors developed into a wheaty mess. It has been getting better in the keg and it's totally drinkable, but it just doesn't taste like it should.

Next beer on deck is going to be a clone of RedHook's Late Harvest Autumn Ale. Kristen and I went through a 12er of this while camping 2 weeks ago so I'm trying to clone it. I got the OG, IBU, SRM, and malt and hop varieties (but not quantities) off their website, so I used the TastyBrew calculator to come up with this for my first partial mash brew in my 2 gallon mash tun:

2 lbs Rahr 2 row
1 lb Weyerman rauchmalt (smoked malt)
.5 lb Caramel 60
.25 lb Caramel 120
.25 lb roasted barley
4 lbs Briess pilsen DME
1 oz Northern Brewer @ 60 minutes
1 oz Saaz @ 10 minutes

Have any of you had this beer? How does the recipe look to you? I hit the stats that RedHook provided but we'll see. I'm not sure about the rauch malt, so I went with just a pound to start. If this all works out I can always try again. It was a nice malty and slightly smoky beer, perfect for cold weather.

I actually just ordered a bunch of stuff from Midwest Supplies too: Golden Promise, Maris Otter, more 2 row, and some yeast. I'm planning on doing a partial mash brew here and there. I might use the Maris Otter in an Oatmeal Stout and the Golden Promise in a big IPA. We'll see though. Anybody else brewing or drinking anything interesting?

Here's what the little mash tun I made looks like. These aren't my pics but mine looks exactly like this:

Brewing News

2008-09-19T18:33:00.004-05:00

Well, it's been awhile since I've blogged about the brewing news. Since the last post, I've blown through the Columbus APA keg. The latest of my single hop APA/IPA series of the summer, I was pretty happy with the results, but I think Columbus, for my taste anyway, needs to be blended with other American hops. Just a little too rough around the edges for beers following the Bush Doctrine of go it alone.

I also buckled down and made my first wine, a Chilean Pinot Noir, that is in secondary right now. Wine kits are a little pricey, but they are ridiculously simple. It took about a half hour to make the thing! From what I hear, they are pretty hard to mess up, so I'm hoping that around Christmas time I'll be sipping some good wine that cost about 4 bucks a bottle.

Right now I'm drinking my Big Bill's Brown ale and will be kegging Jamil's Mild sometime tomorrow. The brown is a little on the young side, only 2.5 weeks since brewing, but it's nice and clear and has a nice sweet chocolate malt backbone with a good hop punch to balance things out.

I picked up ingredients to brew another blonde ale this weekend, as well as the 50 pound sack of DME I ordered. For the blonde I'll be using my hop harvest as well as a bunch of huge Cascade cones that I harvested from the hop yard of a guy in my homebrew club. Last Sunday another club member and I went to his house to help him get rid of his crop. When I saw the trellis I almost cried. It was like a wall of hops reaching to the heavens. After 3 or 4 hours of picking, I got about 3 pounds of Cascade and about a pound each of Saaz and Fuggles. Some of the Saaz will be going into a Czech Pilsner that will be dumbed down with ale yeast since I can't lager yet and the Fuggles will be going into a Stout or Porter of some sort. Seeing this hopyard really got me thinking hard about making a major expansion to my yard next year.

Finally, I picked up all the parts for a partial mash tun so that I can start experimenting with some different base malts like Golden Promise and Maris Otter, but I don't have any solid plans for what I'm going to brew for my first partial mash brew. I'm leaning towards an Oatmeal Stout or maybe a Smoked Porter, but that may change. Any suggestions?

Union Brew - Big Bill's Brown Ale

2008-09-04T21:45:00.003-05:00

With my last weekend of the summer I decided to spend Labor Day brewing and drinking homebrew and decided a big American style brown ale was in order. Being Labor Day and a union man, I just had to name it after Big Bill Haywood, labor organizer and one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World. This batch is a second shot at the Bourbon Barrel Brown, but without the bourbon or oak. I envisioned this as having a little more chocolate but also some more residual sweetness than the first attempt, so I added a little more caramel malts in 3 different lovibonds for complexity, more chocolate for flavor and color, and some pale chocolate for a little toastiness. I kept the hop varieties (Galena for bittering, Ahtanum for flavor/aroma) and schedule the same, but IBUs decreased just a little. Just like I did with the Columbus APA, I brewed with 6 gallons of unsoftened and untreated tap water from outside that I treated with a campden tablet to remove chlorine and chloramine. Big Bill's Brown came in at 1.066 OG and 52 IBUs. I'll leave this in the primary for 3 or 4 weeks and then it's going straight to keg.

While I was brewing this I poured the last pint of my Raspberry Wheat. It's pretty depressing to have a kegging setup with no beer to put in it :( For the first time since June (aside from beer for camping, which doesn't count) I had to buy beer that somebody else made. Bummer. This brew shortage got me motivated so I'm brewing again Saturday morning. On deck I've got Jamil Zainasheff's Mild ale from his book "Brewing Classic Styles." If you don't have this book already, go get it. Now. 80 award winning recipes (1 or 2 for each BJCP category) that have all won ribbons for one of the best homebrewers in the country. So far I've done the IPA and American Amber and they've been 2 of my best beers, so I've got high hopes for this one. It's a very small beer - the OG is only 1.036 - so it will be kind of weird to brew this, but I've heard good things about the recipe and it should be done fast so I'll be able to go right to keg quickly and start drinking a nice session beer for football season.

In other homebrew news, I picked up some more hops (Simcoe and Argentina Cascade) and a spare keg on a recent trip to Midwest Supplies. I just saw today that Freshops has some of the 08 hop crop in and they've got some varieties for pretty cheap, so I'm deciding if I should pull the trigger or not. One thing that complicates the decision is I just dropped a big chunk of change on a 50 pound bag of dry malt extract. I'm a little concerned about how I'm going to store it without it getting chunky, but buying in bulk will save me about 8 bucks a batch for a standard 1.056 beer with 6 pounds of DME in it, so if it works out I figure it's worth it.

Hop Harvest

2008-08-26T21:45:00.006-05:00

Well, I just got back from the hopyard and picked about half of the cones I had that felt papery, started to brown at the tips, or where lupulin was obvious. I wasn't expecting much, and for once I fulfilled my expectations....I didn't get much. See that picture over there-->? I got about twice that, weighing a measly 2 ounces. Wet. Even after picking the rest, I'm guessing I'm only going to get an ounce dry, if that. I'm a little disappointed that I need to scale down my "Homegrown IPA" into a "Homegrown Blonde". C'est la vie. Kristen really liked the AHA's "Fill in the Hop Blonde" that I brewed, so I'll probably brew that again, grains and bittering hop the same but just add whatever homegrowns I get at 10 minutes or flameout or whatever.

Last Saturday I brewed up an all Columbus APA:

7 ounces Caramel 40
8 ounces Carapils
6 pounds Briess Pilsen DME
.5 oz Columbus - 60 minutes
1 oz Columbus - 10 minutes
1.5 oz Columbus - flameout
OG: 1.056, 41 IBU, 5.4% ABV
US-05 yeast pitched at 65, held at 65

This batch I decided to experiment with water a little since I had been tasting a little harsh bitterness and hop flavor until my hoppier beers aged for a couple of weeks, with the exception being the Simcoe IPA I just blew through, which might be simply because that beer was bitter but also had tons of hop flavor and aroma which might have masked it. Since I already had a busted carbon filter, I decided to try to just use hard city water from my outdoor faucet (not through a hose). For no particular reason, I decided to use 4.5 gallons of hard water (including a half gallon for steeping my grains), then 1.5 gallons of softened tap water. I crushed one campden tablet, stirred to dissolve, then let sit in my brewpot for 15 minutes before I started to boil water. I did not treat the steep water unfortunately, so we’ll see if there’s anything from the chloramine or chlorine. Hopefully not.

I'm planning on getting this in the keg fast, probably 2 weeks in primary and then straight to the keg, since we blew through the Simcoe IPA in less than 2 weeks so now I've just got a Raspberry Wheat on tap. That Simcoe IPA (recipe in the previous post), was probably the best beer I've brewed so far. Clean, bitter, dry, malty, HUGE hop aroma, super fresh. If you haven't used Simcoe yet, I strongly suggest you pick some up. I think Surly Furious has Simcoe in it, so if you can find that try it. Actually, I think this beer did turn out to be similar to Furious, which is what I was hoping for. Nice malt backbone, almost amber color, higher gravity but still sessionable, and big hop aroma and flavor. Did I mention the aroma? When I got the recipe from the Jamil Show podcast (American IPA show, Mike McDole's recipe) they suggested after 2 weeks in primary, transfer to secondary, dry hop, and then rouse the hops every day to keep the aromatics in suspension. I don't know how much of an effect this had, but 2 ounces for 10 days left tons of aroma, totally sniffable from a few feet away. I'm not trying to brag, but this beer was so awesome I went to the brewshop and picked up enough Simcoe for 2 more batches and will brew it the same way both times without changing anything, a first for me.

While I'm waiting for the Columbus APA to get drinkable I'm drinking my Raspberry Wheat. If we didn't have tons of raspberries in the garden this year I don't think I would have brewed this because I don't even really like fruit or wheat beers all that much, but it sounded good at the time. I am pleasantly surprised by this beer. It's nice because it's got that graininess of the wheat and refreshing since it's lightly hopped and fairly dry, with a little tartness from the raspberries, but it still has a small amount of an interesting hop flavor from the Argentina Cascades. I'm pretty happy that this turned out to be so balanced, I was really afraid of making a too-fruity beer.

Ahhh, Summer

2008-07-10T16:22:00.005-05:00

Woke up early this morning and brewed myself an all Simcoe IPA. I used Mike McDole's IPA recipe from the Jamil Show, changing only the Munich malt to Vienna (I have a bunch on hand), and the hop variety but not the schedule. Here's what it looks like:

7 lbs Briess Pilsen DME
.5 lbs Crystal 60
.5 lbs CaraPils
.25 Crystal 120
.25 Vienna
.75 oz Simcoe (60 minutes)
1.5 oz Simcoe (15 minutes)
2 oz Simcoe (5 minutes)
2 oz Simcoe (dryhop)

You math whizzes might have noticed that the hop amounts came to 6.25 oz, and you're probably thinking, "hey, where did that extra quarter ounce come from?" Fat sack, dude. A very nice surprise at 6 am in the morning. A quarter ounce isn't much, but I'll take it in these desperate times we live in. McDole's recipe calls for dryhopping with something crazy like 6 ounces of hops, but I can't afford that, so I'm going with the 2 ounces but I will shake the fermenter every day to keep extracting those aromatics like he suggests. I'm looking very forward to drinking this one.

I've got both kegs filled and carbed. Why the heck did I wait this long to start kegging? The Amber is awesome, although I wish I would have dryhopped with 2 ounces of Centennial instead of just one, and the Blonde is quite good also. The blonde is on the high side of the guidelines for gravity in the style, so it's a tad heavy for a summer beer, but it tastes pretty good nonetheless. It's pretty weird to be drinking a beer with only 25 ibus though; everything else I've been drinking and brewing lately is at least twice that. I think I'll brew another blonde this summer but with Argentina Cascades instead of Northern Brewer.

As far as my hopyard goes, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that they're all growing, but there's quite a bit of bad news. I don't have enough sun where I planted them so none of them are taller than chest high right now. Unfortunately I broke the tip off the tallest bine on my Cascade, and the tallest bine on my Centennial was broken off at the ground. The Zeus is pretty small, but still growing. Hopefully the other bines start shooting up to compensate!

Aside from homebrew, I've also had the opportunity to sample some brews I've been waiting to try for a very long time. Brian hooked me up with 2 bottles of Stone Ruination (I owe you bigtime!) and I was impressed. On the way home from Milwaukee I also picked up Bear Republic's XP Pale Ale, Racer 5 IPA, Red Rocket, and Hop Rod Rye. The XP was a very nice APA with an awesome Cascade/Centennial aroma. Racer 5 was also very good, just a hair under Ruination on my top 5 list. One of these days I'll do a side by side with Red Rocket and my Amber. I picked up the rye for research. If I like that will push me faster into partial mash. My battery is dying and my glass is empty, I'm out.

Summer Brew Session

2008-06-20T16:12:00.004-05:00

I'm back. The pic above is my Centennial 2 weeks ago. Not much to look at yet, but they're growing! I went to the garden a few days ago and the Cascade had shot up to knee high, the Centennial was about 8 inches, and the Zeus was about 4. The Cascade and Centennial both got trained up the pole, but the Zeus isn't quite big enough yet, I think it gets a little too much shade from the bumper crop of raspberries I have coming in. Still crossing my fingers for a harvest, but I'm not keeping my hopes up.

In other homebrew news, the Wee Heavy is finally carbed and tasting good, but I've stashed half the batch for next winter to wait for improvement. Unfortunately, I'm down to just a handful of Bourbon Barrel Browns (drinking one right now), and it just keeps getting better. The double IPA is still a little undercarbed after 3 weeks, but it is tasting excellent. I'm having a hard time waiting for them to condition - it's going to be so nice to not have to worry about that once I start kegging. I dryhopped the Red Rocket clone on Father's Day and really enjoyed the sample, I'm hoping to keg that sometime next week.

Now that things have settled down after bringing my new son home, I was able to sneak away for an early morning brew session this morning. I finally brewed the American Homebrewers Association Big Brew recipe for Fill in the Hop Blonde Ale with Northern Brewer hops, I'm hoping I like them so maybe next year I can get a rhizome. I overshot the gravity (intentionally) because I didn't feel like messing around with measuring out 7/8 of a pound of DME and I also accidentally added the whole ounce at 10 minutes instead of a half ounce - that's what homebrew at 7am will do to you. Now I need to decide if I'm going to dryhop like the recipe suggests or just let it be. Either way I should get a nice summer brew.

Just for fun, here's some pics of the rig, especially the 8 dollar windscreen. I bought 2 pieces of 8 inch furnace pipe metal from Menards, joined them together, and on brew day I wrap it around the burner stand. I don't know if it is because of the windscreen or what, but I get 7 batches per tank. The last pic is of the tag if you want to go to Menards to grab one for yourself.

Big News!

2008-06-04T10:48:00.006-05:00

I am now kegging! Here's the setup I got:

My current setup will be to toss these guys in a wine fridge I got from HomeDespot a few years ago, it's about the size of the infamous 4912. I went with the double regulator though because down the road I'm thinking I'll go the chest freezer route and put a keg of soda on for the kids which will require a different serving pressure (I think), and this was the same price as a single regulator with a splitter/manifold, so I figured it was worth it. For now I'll be able to serve one and force carb the other without having to mess around too much, important because the CO2 is going to be stuck behind the kegs without a whole lot of room to maneuver.

The first batch that I'll keg is currently fermenting. Last Saturday night I got all my stuff together, put grains into bags, filled the brewpot with filtered water, and got everything to go for an early morning brew session on Sunday. I woke up at 5:30 and my boil was going by 6:30. The recipe was Jamil's American Amber/Red Rocket clone. Here's the specs:

6.75 lbs Briess Pilsen DME
1 lb Briess Amber DME
1 lb American Crystal 40
.5 lb American Crystal 120
.5 lb American Victory
3 oz British Pale Chocolate
1 oz Columbus - 60 minutes
1 oz Cascade - 10 minutes
1 oz Centennial - 10 minutes
1 oz Cascade - flameout
1 oz Centennial - flameout

I came up with an OG of 1.070 and 60 IBUs. I'm really hoping this one turns out, since I am growing all of these hops, so if I like the hop combo I can keep making this beer for cheap. I tried to do a mini mash on the stove of the grains, but it was sort of hard to keep them at the right temp and I ended up undershooting the estimated OG. I might have added a little too much water or something since my 32 quart pot isn't quite enough to do a full 6 gallon boil once I start adding DME. I'm thinking after I get my kegging system running I might rig up a mini mashtun out of a 2 or 3 gallon cooler with a valve and a stainless braid. If it works I might be able to get rid of some of my DME costs by making some of my own fermentables out of much cheaper grains. We'll see though.

While I was at Midwest Homebrewing Supplies picking up my kegging system I also scored some Simcoe, Columbus, and Amarillo for cheap (although they limit you to 3 ounces of a variety), so now I've got over a pound of hops in the freezer. I think my next batch is going the be the AHA Big Brew's Fill in the Hop Blonde (maybe with Willamette?) to have a gateway beer for people who come over after the new baby comes that might not dig hopmonsters, and then I'll brew up my American Brown ale and after that it will be all APAs and IPAs for a while. I think I'll try to do single hop batches this summer so I can get a really good feel for bittering, flavor, and aroma qualities.

My Wee Heavy is finally carbed and tastes pretty good. It's a nice dark brown with ruby highlights and a nice malty sweet aroma. Not much hop presence obviously, but it's a big chewy beer, just a little alcohol warming (not fusels though). This one tastes a little young, so I'm looking forward to how it tastes in the fall and winter.

The Cascarillo is carbed too and super tasty. This one just had an ounce of Cascade and half ounce of Amarillo at 10 minutes and then the same at flameout, bittered with an ounce of Cascade, and it is awesome. Nice pale gold color, good citrus and flowery hop aroma, and a nice grapefruit hop flavor. I'll be brewing this later this summer with more Amarillo to see what happens. After tasting this I wish I would have put more Amarillo late in the boil on my Hopslam clone.

Bourbon Barrel Brown

2008-05-24T08:12:00.003-05:00

So, here's the recipe for the Bourbon Barrel Brown. I've still got a little more than a 6er left and it keeps changing and improving. The Maker's Mark soaked oak chips really added some interesting flavors. I would not add more bourbon and be very careful about how long you leave the chips in otherwise it could get overwhelming. Definitely pull a sample after a few days to see how you like it. An alternative would be to use cubes or something with less surface area, then you could leave the beer on wood longer. This beer has some really interesting vanilla notes to it, explained by a homebrew club member who tasted it as the bourbon coming out (in?) of suspension. Anyhoo, let me know if you try it. I will be brewing the same one soon but probably won't oak it.

6 lbs light liquid ME
2 lbs light dry ME
8 oz caramel/crystal 60
6 oz chocolate malt
5 oz special roast malt
2 oz caramel/crystal 90
1 oz Galena hops at 60 minutes
1 oz Ahtanum hops at 10 minutes
1 oz American oak chips, steamed for 10 minutes and soaked in 5 oz Maker's Mark bourbon for about a month (added to secondary for 6 days)

OG 1.062, FG 1.014, 57 IBUs. As I brewed it, it seemed a little too light in color and not quite enough sweetness and chocolate, so I think if I brew this again I'll make a few changes to the grain bill but keep the hop schedule the same, though. Making a yeast starter to get the gravity to drop nice and low will help to dry it out nicely too. Something like this maybe:

7 lbs light DME (easier to get at my lhbs)
4 oz crystal 60
4 oz crystal 90
8 oz chocolate malt
4 oz special roast malt

The OG would be about the same, but dropping the crystal 60 and bumping up the crystal 90 will keep the same sweetness but a little more color, and then bumping up the chocolate malt will give me a little more of that chocolatey goodness and color. I like the special roast too, it was the first time I used it and it's a pretty tasty grain, so I might bump that up some more too. Have any of you guys used it?

UPDATE (11:00 pm): Kristen and I planted the garden today, and aside from a tiny (1/4 inch) shoot on my Cascade mound, no shoots. Upon closer examination however, the ground was about as hard as concrete, so with a superhuman feat of strength I broke up each mound, carefully found the rhizome, then put loose soil back on top and gave them a good drink of water. All 3 rhizomes had some good underground budding going on, so I'm happy. I might not have much of yield since it's so late, but hey, they're not dead right?

Also, when I got home today I had a box filled with 4 oz of Centennial and a bunch of specialty grains, so I might be brewing on Monday if my lhbs is open tomorrow. I'm thinking Jamil's Amber (clone of Bear Republic's Red Rocket: http://www.beerdujour.com/Recipes/Jamil/JamilsAmericanAmberAle.htm). BTW, I ordered from Williams Brewing, and although you have to buy an equal dollar value of other stuff when you buy hops, they do send you beer coasters, which I thought was pretty frickin cool.

Building the Stash

2008-05-14T10:13:00.002-05:00

It's getting pretty close to the due date for #2, so I've been trying to get some batches bottled in case I can't get to them for awhile. Last Saturday the shared batch of double IPA (Hopslam clone attempt) was bottled. Kim and Cole and Kristen and I both walked away with a case of bottles each. This bad boy finally came in at 9% ABV and 100 IBUs. The sample we tasted was remarkably drinkable for such a big beer, so I'll be drinking this one fresh as soon as it's carbed up. It's probably not an exact clone, but it did taste damn good. I'll have a more detailed rating later when it's ready.

Last night I bottled the Cascarillo APA. The sample was good, but a little underwhelming. Hopefully carbonation and maybe a little bottle aging will do it some good.

My hops have still not popped out of the ground. Hopefully some warmer weather makes something happen. I'm trying to stay calm about it, but I'm tempted to get over to the garden and do some digging to see what' going on.

Spring Fever

2008-04-28T20:17:00.009-05:00

Well, spring is here, and with the upcoming birth of my second son, the extra stress that goes with my job in the spring, and the unfortunate disaster of dumping my dubbel, not to mention that Wee Heavy that refuses to carbonate, I am looking at building up my reserves.

On Saturday I brewed up a Cascade and Amarillo APA (Cascarillo). The quick recipe:

6 pounds Pilsen DME
8 ounces Victory malt
6 ounces Crystal 40
2 ounces Crystal 10
1 oz Cascade (60 min.)
1 oz Cascade plus .5 oz Amarillo (10 min.)
1 oz Cascade plus .5 oz Amarillo (flameout)

The Crystal 40 and 10 and the Amarillo were leftovers from the Hopslam project. I've been really digging Cascade hops and APAs lately, so I'm planning on brewing the same beer over and over this summer and just swapping out the hops to see if I can detect any differences. After the Hopslam I only had an ounce each of Simcoe, Columbus, and Amarillo, which isn't much, but I decided that I would separate those and combine them with Cascade, which I bought cheap at my LHBS. I really want to stick to the same recipe as much as possible, but I will just be using Crystal 40 for the next 2 batches. This was also my first batch with Safale US-05 dry yeast, and so far I like it. No messing with starters, just open and dump it into the wort. 12 hours later I had fermenting wort. For my next several batches I intend to use this (I bought 9 packs) and put the money I saved on yeast into hops.

The Hopslam clone is well on its way to completion. While the Cascarillo was boiling away, I racked the Hopslam into secondary on top of an ounce of Cascades for dryhopping. The sample I pulled had dropped down to 1.017, which I think puts this beer at about 9% alcohol. The big yeast cake I pitched really helped with the attenuation. The sample was almost orange with a nice hop aroma, not huge though, which is why I dryhopped. The taste was obviously hop forward, citrusy, a little grapefruit, and a little sweetness underneath. It was much drier than the sample I pulled 2 weeks ago, so I think this thing will be drinkable as soon as it carbs up. Here's a few pics that I finally pulled off the camera from brew day and fermentation:

Check out this blowoff, I had to dump the gallon pitcher 4 times!

2 Saturdays ago I attended my second RAZE (Rochester Area Zymurgy Enthusiasts) homebrew club meeting. One of the members had it at his house and we helped him put up a new trellis system for his hops. I had written off the idea of growing hops this year, but after seeing his setup and getting hooked up with some rhizomes, I got pretty fired up about planting my own hopyard. As soon as I got home I started looking for any rhizomes that were still available online and managed to find Cascade, Centennial, and Zeus from freshops.com. Zeus is apparently the same as Columbus and Tomahawk, just not trademarked. I ordered on Sunday and Friday night I planted. I had to scale back my original plans, but now I've got 3 mounds in rich Minnesota soil and I've got high hopes. I dug a hole about 2 feet square and about 6 inches down, mixed in a few shovelfuls of composted manure, and then built up a mound and put the rhizomes on top. I used an 8 foot 2x2 buried 2 feet in the ground to get them started, and then I'm going to run twine from the top of the stakes to eye bolts that I'll screw into the top of the barn. This should give me at least 20 feet of room to run. There's more pictures below. So to all of my loyal readers (haha), what's brewing? Did anybody else get rhizomes in the ground?

Death of the Dubbel

2008-04-15T21:22:00.002-05:00

It's been awhile since I've posted, I guess I've been busy with work and being sick all last week so I haven't been doing too much brewing related stuff lately. On Sunday I finally got around to checking the gravity of the Dubbel and the Hopslam clone. The dubbel had dropped down to 1.016, lower than the target. I thought that was interesting since it took 3 yeast additions to get the dang thing going and then it crapped out after about 3 days, so I was curious what it would taste like. Now, granted, I had just gotten over the stomach flu so it was the first taste of beer I had in about a week, but that was the single worst taste I have ever had in my mouth. I couldn't even force it down. After an hour of hemming and hawing I finally did what had to be done, I dumped it. This was the first time I ever dumped a batch and it was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.

The Hopslam clone is coming along nicely. The sample I tasted smelled awesome, super citrusy and delicious, but the taste was a liiiitle rough around the edges. Hopefully it will be an awesome beer, just going to take a little time to let the big bastard mellow. The gravity had dropped to 1.022, which is only a few points away from the target, but it is still bubbling every 10 seconds or so after more than 2 weeks in the fermenter, so I've still got hopes that it will continue to drop. I did bring it upstairs into slightly warmer temps to prevent the yeast from pooping out early.

In other news, I stopped at a homebrew shop in Stevens Point 2 weeks ago when I went to visit my folks and picked up 9 packs of Safale US-05 dry yeast to experiment with this summer. I've heard good things about it so I'm hoping that it works well for the APAs, brown ales, and ambers I have planned for the summer. I figured that it will save me some time and messing around with starters, while also being easier on the wallet. Of course, any savings will be reinvested in hops! I'm still holding out hope to be kegging by the time the next baby comes, but I have to save some dough, not an easy thing now that golf and fishing season have finally started. Finally, my wee heavy has still not carbed up! It has been almost a month now. I've got the bottles sitting on a heating pad right now and I swirled them up to hopefully wake up any yeast that's left. What's the longest you've waited to have a carbonated beer?

The Hopslam Project

2008-03-30T21:56:00.005-05:00

The Hopslam clone was brewed on Saturday. We stuck with the same steeping grains that I listed in the original recipe, but bumped the DME up to 10 pounds and honey to 1.5 pounds. Since I was able to pick up Simcoe and Columbus, we changed the hops around quite a bit. Here's the hop schedule:

60 minutes: 1 ounce Yakima Magnum
30 minutes: 1 ounce Cascade, 1 ounce Simcoe
20 minutes: 1 ounce mix of Cascade, Columbus, Amarillo
15 minutes: 1 ounce mix of Cascade, Columbus, Amarillo
10 minutes: 1 ounce mix of Cascade, Columbus, Amarillo
5 minutes: 1 ounce Simcoe
Flameout: 2 ounces Centennial leaf

That's right, 9 ounces of hops. Everything went pretty well until after the wort was cooled. I probably had a few too many homebrews and added too much water to top up, and didn't account for the 1500 mL starter that we pitched, so the OG was a lot lower than originally calculated. According to the TastyBrew calculator, that dropped it from around 10% ABV to about 8.5%. Bummer. It should still make some awesome beer though. It is kicking massive amounts of foam into the blowoff tube right now and it smells great. I just brought it downstairs to keep the temp a little cooler.

It was really fun to brew with somebody else for once. Sharing the cost was cool, and Cole and I both ended up with enough hops and specialty grain leftovers for at least one batch each, so that's a bonus too. If I get around to it I'll post some pictures of Saturday's silliness.

Dubbel Trouble

2008-03-28T10:29:00.002-05:00

Yeah, yeah, corny title, but it's the truth. Here's the story:

I had come up with this awesome recipe for a Belgian dubbel, bought a 17 ounce hockey puck-looking lump of palm sugar from the Asian grocery store, and cultured yeast from a bottle of Chimay Red. I thought everything was good, brewed it up on Monday without incident, and pitched what I thought was an active starter (with about .5 inch or more of slurry at the bottom of my flask) at 64 degrees. I had this idea after reading on various forums that I should pitch around there and then just let the temps go up, so I pitched at 64 exactly and left the primary in an upstairs closet which would be warmer than downstairs (where I usually ferment).

Monday night - nothing
Tuesday morning - nothing, swirled it good
Tuesday night - nothing, swirled (starting to get nervous)
Wednesday morning - nothing (freaking out)
Wednesday night - nothing

Wednesday night I went and bought a smack pack of 1214, went home, and turned on the space heater for a few hours and swirled every 20 minutes or so. I pumped it up to about 68 and then at about 9 I decided to activate the smack pack. At 10 I pitched it, even though it wasn't swelled up too much, and added 2 tiny drops of olive oil as I poured it in.

Thursday morning - nothing
Thursday after work - nothing - so I turned on the space heater again and finally said F this and pitched a pack of Munton's Gold dry yeast that I had sitting around. As of this morning, it's just starting to throw tiny amounts of CO2 after I swirl.

I refuse to give up on this batch! So does anybody care to place bets?

Will this make beer?
Will it taste like dirty water?

In other news, the Hopslam will be brewed tomorrow!

Hopslam Clone

2008-03-20T12:49:00.006-05:00

Okay, so after much research and a couple of different versions, Cole and I have come up with what we hope is a close reproduction of Bell's Hopslam. In my last post I mentioned the thread that came up on the BrewBoard forum about a clone and how somebody mentioned using Vanguard, Hersbrucker, and a few others and that this person got the info straight from Bell's. We decided to disregard this information and go with the hops we can actually get our hands on that are really citrusy. The stuff tastes like grapefruit juice, right? The problem is, the suggestion of Simcoe that sounds right for this recipe is pretty tough to find, so we had to make do with what we could find:

Steeping grains:

1/2 lb. honey malt
1/2 lb. munich malt
1/4 lb. caramel 10L
1/4 lb. caramel 40L

Fermentables:

9 lbs Briess Pilsen DME
1 lb. honey

Hops:

60 minutes: 1 oz Yakima Magnum
30 minutes: 1/3 ounce Ahtanum, 1/3 ounce Amarillo, 1 ounce Cascade
20 minutes: 1/3 ounce Ahtanum, 1/3 ounce Amarillo, 1 ounce Cascade
10 minutes: 1/3 ounce Ahtanum, 1/3 ounce Amarillo, 1 ounce Cascade
Flameout: 2 ounces Centennial leaf hops

How does that look? According to the TastyBrew calculator we're looking at an OG of 1.091 and 101 IBUs, with the majority of the bittering coming from the late additions. We tried to balance out our desire for a big double IPA with the scarcity of hops and economic considerations. This is still going over 80 bucks! Does that sound like it might taste like Hopslam to you? We're hoping it gets close, if not, it will hopefully be a damn good beer anyway.

PS - I'll be brewing up my first dubbel with harvested Chimay red yeast this weekend. Woohoo!

EDIT: I just scored 3 ounces of Simcoe and 3 ounces of Columbus! Now it's back to the drawing board. Any suggestions?

The Next Project

2008-03-16T19:46:00.004-05:00

Well, before I fill you in on my latest planned brewing adventure, how about an update on my stash? The DIPA is kicked, along with the Deported stout, and my Blonde Abbey and Full Monty are dangerously close to being gone. Sniff. On the upside, my Bourbon Barrel Brown is tasting pretty damn good, although more oaky than I expected, especially since I only threw in an ounce of oak chips for 4 days. I do really like it and think that it's one of the better brews I've made, it's just not a session brew - probably a good thing, that will force me to keep some for a while and see how it changes over time.

My all-Cascade Hopburst APA is now carbed and tastes awesome, if I do say so myself. It's not as citrusy like I normally associate with Cascade, which I'm thinking is the result of only doing the late additions. It is a beautiful gold color, clear, nice white head, sweet malty backbone, a taste of sweet caramel or honey, with the citrusy, piney hops balancing it out nicely. This was a really easy beer to make too, so if you want the recipe let me know. With lighter colored beers like this I'm really digging the full boil action - I was never able to get golds and yellows on the stovetop.

I bottled my Wee Heavy Saturday, the sample was a nice mahogany color, very malty sweet, a little alcohol in the finish, and just a slight peaty or smoky flavor, which is weird since there isn't any peated or smoked malt in it. I'm anxious to see how this one develops over time - the plan is to drink some young (an ale brewer's version of a maibock?), and then keep the rest for next fall and winter.

Now on to the PLAN. So my buddy Cole and I have both been enjoying the Bell's Hopslam lately. Over a few beers after work on Friday, we devised a plan to tag team a clone of this, splitting the work and cost. We both figured that with the cost of hops lately and the high gravity of this bad boy, it will get pretty spendy. I've figured out from the Bell's website that the OG is around 1.090 and I'm thinking around 100 IBUs. This is the best thread I could find so far: http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=67588 . On this thread, somebody said that according to Bell's, they "use Hersbrucker, Centennial, Glacier, Vanguard, & Crystal in the kettle, and then dry hop with Simcoe." Does this sound right to you? I don't know much about a lot of those hops, but I don't recall ever hearing "citrus" associated with any of those except Centennial and Simcoe. Any ideas? I'm thinking more about Ahtanum, Centennial, Amarillo, Cascade, Galena, Simcoe, Columbus. We'll be brewing this up in 2 weeks (I've got a dubbel on deck for next weekend), so any input you've got would be great!

A Non-Technical Post, I Promise!

2008-03-06T21:37:00.002-06:00

Alright, judging from the amount of responses to my last post my readers (all 2 of you) are either: not interested in starters, bored by long winded technical treatises on the finer points of yeast harvesting and propagation, or both. So, here's a short post to bring you back in the fold.

I bottled up my all-Cascade Hopburst APA last night. The sample tasted damn good, but not as hoppy as I expected, probably because I've been destroying my sense of taste by drinking too many SN Bigfoot and Bell's Hopslams lately. This APA should be a good one once it's carbed up.

Right now I am drinking the last bomber of my Summit 2IPA. I am very close to crying. All I have left of this batch is a 34 oz special reserve. I will be bringing this, plus 34ozers of my Deported Stout, Blonde Abbey, Full Monty cherry bitter, and a few Bourbon Barrel Browns and a single uncarbed bottle of the APA to the Dells this weekend for the waterpark extravaganza. See you there Bri!

Yeast Starters

2008-02-27T19:18:00.004-06:00

Alright, so I've been talking about these since I've been using them so much lately. Here's the Tesslerfied version. DISCLAIMER: You can find a lot of info about starters by searching the forums at northernbrewer.com or tastybrew.com, and I've probably read most of those (addictive personality), and I encourage you to check those out too. There are different schools of thought about different steps in the process, so just understand, I am by no means an expert and am still figuring this stuff out, but this is what I've learned after killing countless hours reading. So take it with a grain of salt, consider the source, yadda yadda.

MATERIALS:

1000 OR 2000 mL Pyrex flask, growler, or 1 gallon cider jug
small soup or saucepan if you're not using the flask
scale - preferably one with metric measurements
dry malt extract (DME) - a 1 lb bag is plenty
measuring cups
airlock or foam stopper

METHOD

The whole point is to build your yeast population to a large enough number so that you can reduce lag times, reduce the risk of contamination, and ensure a more complete fermentation. Wyeast smack packs and WhiteLabs tubes are supposed to be pitchable, but for higher gravity beers and lagers starters are almost a necessity. Even smaller brews can benefit from a starter. If you're going to drop the cash and spend the time brewing your beer, why not give it a better chance of being successful right? A starter is just a mini batch of beer, where you're giving your smack pack or whatever more food so that the yeast inside will gorge themselves, multiply their population, and get primed for fermenting your precious wort.

First, you need to determine the size of your starter. If you want to really get technical you can check out the pitching calculator at the Mr.Malty site on my links, but I never do, too technical for me. Basically, you want to make a starter that has an OG of around 1.035 or so. As far as how big you want to go, that depends on your beer. Right now I am building up a culture from the bottom of a bottle of Chimay for a dubbel I'm brewing in the future, so I started with a half-liter starter, let it go for 2 days, then did another half-liter, then I'll step up again to a liter and maybe do that again. For most brews that's probably not necessary, especially if you're starting with a smack pack. Most of the starters I've done have been a liter for beers between 1.040 and 1.065, and 2 liters for bigger brews.

To get a gravity around 1.035, the easiest way to do it is to go metric. A simple ratio of 1 gram DME to 10 mL of water works out to about 1.035. So, measure out 100 grams of DME to 1 liter of water and you're good to go! If you are anti-metric, you'd need a little under 4 ounces DME for 1 quart of water. You can get a cheap digital scale at Target.

Now you're ready to boil, so let's talk containers. You can use one of the Erlenmeyer flasks that Northern Brewer sells (I have one), but it is not a necessity. The advantage to those is that if you have a gas stove or electric coils, you can put the starter mix right in the flask, boil it in the flask, cool it, then dump the yeast in. I have a smoothtop electric stove and have seen Kristen make a Pyrex mixing bowl explode on top of that, so that worries me a little. The other thing I don't like about the flasks is that they are narrow at the top so you can get a really fast volcanic boilover even with the little amount of wort you're boiling, and that's a PITA. I just put it in a saucepan and boil it for 15 minutes. Then I pour the starter into a standard half gallon growler that you can get at any brewpub. A one gallon cider jug would work fine too.

When your starter is cooled enough so that it's no longer warm to the touch I flame the lip of my sanitized growler, put in the sanitized funnel, dump in the yeast, throw the airlock on, and shake like crazy. Some people have stirplates that continously stir the starter which is really good for the yeast, but I just swirl it every time I walk by. The key is to not let your yeast drop out of suspension so that's what the swirling is for. You don't have to go nuts with it, but do it when you can. This keeps the yeast active so that they keep reproducing. Oh yeah baby, asexual reproduction! As far as temperature goes, keep it around room temperature. Some people say you should keep the starter at the same temperature that fermentation of the beer is going to happen, but for a starter you're just building cell counts, so just keep it between 65 and 75 and you're good to go. I keep mine on top of my fridge with a brown paper lunch bag to protect it from light. There's mixed information out there about whether light is bad or good for starters, so I just err on the side of caution.

Now, the big question is, when do you make your starter? There's a lot of conflicting information out there on this one too, and basically the controversy is whether you pitch the whole starter when it's active or do you put the starter in the fridge to crash the yeast and make them settle to the bottom, then pour off the spent wort and just pitch the slurry. I have done both and have noticed the crashed starter took a little longer, but lag time was still under 6 hours. For me, the decision boils down to the size of the starter. If it's bigger than a liter, I'll crash it and decant, if it's a liter or smaller, I pitch the whole thing. I personally prefer having an active starter to pitch, so if I'm going to brew on Saturday, I would make the starter on Wednesday or Thursday. That way I'll have a fairly active starter being pitched into my wort.

Starters do give you some flexibility too. If I made a starter on Thursday but then had to postpone for a week, I would throw the starter in the fridge and then the night before or morning before brewing I would take it out, let it warm up, pour off the spent wort then give it a fresh meal of cooled wort so that it's active. Right now I have half of the yeast cake from my Bourbon Barrel Brown in the back of the fridge. When I know I'm going to use it, I'll wake it up by warming it up to room temperature and then giving it a fresh meal and pitch the whole thing. Well, I see this post has gotten ridiculously long (me, ramble?), so I'll just stop here. Any questions?

Fun with Hopbursting

2008-02-20T18:57:00.004-06:00

Sunday was brew day for me. I put together a recipe using "Designing Great Beers" for an American Pale Ale: .5 lb Munich, .5 lb Crystal 40, 6 lbs Pilsen DME, and 5 ounces of Cascade hops. I've been reading about hopbursting, so I decided to give it a shot with this batch. Basically, the idea is to add all of your hops at the end of the boil to maximize flavor and aroma. You still get some bittering, but not tons, so that's why you need to use a lot of hops. I started my additions with 20 minutes left, then did another ounce every 5 minutes.

I did have another minor boilover right away when I added the first 3 lbs of DME. I'm trying to decide for next time if I should drop my boil volume by a gallon or try out some Fermcap (I guess it's supposed to knock out the foam). What would you do? Anybody else having issues with their new full boil setups? I did rig up a pretty sweet windscreen for my burner and kettle. Brian suggested sheet metal, but what I think he suggested (I was drinking at the time) didn't sound like it would work on my rig, so I ended up getting 2 ten inch diameter furnace duct pieces that are 36 inches long. I crimped them together and ended up with an awesome windscreen that goes almost all the way around the burner stand and goes up almost to the top of the kettle to trap in heat, plus it only cost me 8 bucks.

I reused half of the yeast cake that I saved from my Brown ale, which had been in the beer fridge for 3 weeks. I just brought it to room temp while I was brewing but didn't make a starter or anything to wake it up, just poured off the beer from on top, swirled it to get the yeast into suspension, and pitched it. It was probabably about 2 cups of slurry total. Apparently if a yeast cake has been sleeping in the cold for 3 weeks it needs a snack to wake up, because it took 20 hours to start fermenting. I was pretty worried, plus I went to my LHBS to pick up some dry yeast "just in case", but it was closed for President's Day. Fortunately, when I got back home empty handed the yeast was belching out CO2. It is now rocking out and kicking goo into the blowoff tube at a comfortable 60 degrees and it smells awesome!

I'm thinking about maybe brewing a dubbel after I culture the Chimay yeast or another brown ale (probably not oaked) next. Have you seen kit and hop prices at Northern Brewer lately? Holy smokes, it's like 50 bucks for their IPA kits! I did spend a little more at my LHBS when I built my APA recipe, but their hops were still only 2 bucks an ounce. I'm thinking about buying a 33 lb jug of LME to save some cash. Anyone else do or consider bulk buys?

I know at least Jeremy brewed this weekend, how did your brew day go?

Super Bowl Sunday

2008-02-03T22:04:00.000-06:00

Way to go Giants! I am so happy to see that cheater Bellichek get beat. Anyways, I haven't brewed in a while, just done some menial brewing chores. I have really been enjoying drinking my homebrews.

I'm on the last minikeg of Deported Stout, and I will be sad to see it go. I remember when I first started drinking this batch and it had some bad fusels, headache city. Now I taste the big roasted and chocolatey malt, and it still has a big hop kick to it too.
The 618 2IPA is also just getting better and better. This beer is 97 IBUs! I'm lucky to be on heartburn meds, otherwise I would be really suffering after a bomber of this one. Definitely my best IPA so far.
The Blonde Abbey is also tasting really good. I picked up a mix and match 6er a couple of weeks ago and grabbed a Leffe Blonde (what NB's Lefse Blonde kit is supposed to copy) and an Affligem Blonde. My beer is really close to the Affligem, so I'm stoked that my first Belgian turned out as good as it did.
The Full Monty Cherry Bitter has been a pleasant surprise. When I bottled this, the sample tasted like it was going to be a dumped batch, it totally tasted like ass. I carbed it pretty high and let it sit for a month before I started drinking it, and now it's actually pretty good. It finished pretty dry, probably because of the pound of brown sugar to boost gravity. You can definitely taste the tartness of the Montmorency cherries contrasting with the bitterness of the hops. It's not my best beer, but considering what I thought it was going to be, I'm pretty happy that it's totally drinkable and actually enjoyable.
I bottled my Bourbon Barrel Brown today, and I am super excited about this one! If you remember from the last post, I designed this beer from scratch with "Designing Great Beers". I had steamed an ounce of oak chips and soaked them in 5 ounces of Maker's Mark bourbon for about a month, and just racked the beer into secondary on top of the oak chips and bourbon last Tuesday. I pulled a sample Friday night and I could definitely taste the oak, so I knew it was time to bottle. I actually left about 30 ounces of this in the bottling bucket just so that I could drink this today. The oak is pretty obvious, but you can totally taste the hops and malty goodness too. If it tastes this good on bottling day, I've got very high hopes for this when it's carbed. It will be hard to keep this one in the house.
On the non-homebrew front, I've been drinking some Abita TurboDog lately, and I highly recommend this American Brown Ale. It's super tasty.

What are you drinking?

My First Outdoor Brew Session

2008-01-06T18:06:00.000-06:00

After Mother Nature forced me to abort my New Year's Day brewing, I finally got around to brewing yesterday. As I mentioned in my last entry, I was debating what to do with my starters, and I decided to toss them in the fridge on Tuesday or Wednesday. On Friday night I brought out the Wee Heavy's starter (Wyeast 1728 - Scottish Ale), warmed it up to room temperature, poured off the spent wort, then added another cup and half of DME boiled in 1500 mL of water. That got it going super active by Saturday morning. The Wee Heavy is actually sending massive amounts of foam and stuff through the blowoff tube as we speak, I've had to suck water out of the pitcher full of sanitizer that my blowoff tubes run into twice already today. The American Brown is also active, but not as much as the Wee Heavy. I think one of the reasons is that I also poured off the spent wort on that starter (Wyeast 1056 - American Ale) but didn't step it up because the Brown isn't as big as the Wee Heavy and also just pitched the slurry. Normally I pitch the whole starter when it's active. Regardless, the Brown's lag time was about 6 hours, but the Wee Heavy was only 2. Knowing that there's less time for bad bugs to take hold in my beer is reason enough for me to use starters.

Back to the brewing. I got off to a little bit of a late start, but I hooked up the propane, did a leak test, poured in 6 gallons, and turned it on full blast. I had read that for brewing in an aluminum pot you should boil just water in it first to create the dark gray coating on the inside of the kettle, so that's what I did. I was a little disappointed in the boil time though. It took about 25 minutes or so to bring it to a good boil. I was hoping for a little less, but there was a pretty good wind all day, which probably (hopefully) had some effect. I actually shoveled a big snowbank as a windbreak when I started but then the wind shifted and kept shifting all day so I just said screw it. After about 30 minutes I got impatient and hooked up the wort chiller. That was impressive! I got the water down to 75 degrees in about 12 minutes. I realize the water's pretty cold in winter, but if I can get anywhere close to that in the summer I will be happy.

I started the American Brown Ale right after that, pouring 5.5 gallons into the kettle plus the half gallon I steeped my specialty grains in. I thought this would be fine since I lost about a half gallon during my test boil, but when I added the malt extract that brought the level up too high. I was dangerously close to a boil over for about 10 minutes. Things settled down for a while but when I threw the flavor and aroma hops, my late addition extract, and the chiller to sterilize, I did have a minor boilover. Not as big of a deal as indoors on the stove, but it's still not cool. A 30 quart brewpot is not quite enough to boil 6 gallons without worrying about boilovers, but it's still a major improvement over the little pot I was using on the stove.

While that was chilling I was sanitizing my siphon and collecting water for the next boil, and while I was pitching the yeast on the Brown I had started the Wee Heavy's boil, this time with 5 gallons of water plus the half gallon of steeping grain water. The Wee Heavy was weird though because I didn't lose that much volume over the course of the boil. Maybe because I added 12 pounds of liquid extract? Mwahaha. That is going to be a huge beer.

Overall, brewing outside is pretty awesome. Even though I think my burner is not super powerful, I still dropped the time it takes to make a batch quite a bit. Plus, it was only 20 bucks, so what the hell. It took a little less than 2 hours from the time I started boiling water to pitching the yeast. I think that if I build a windscreen of some sort I might be able to drop that a little more, so I'm happy. Kristen's happy because the house doesn't stink, and cleanup is easier since I can just hose off the patio. In addition, since you're not supposed to use oxiclean, bleach, or other harsh chemicals on aluminum pots, cleanup is even easier and faster since I just add some hot water and mild soap and wipe it down with a rag, give it a rinse, and I'm done. I'm still debating whether I should drill a hole in my brewpot and add a valve to make transferring the wort into the fermenter faster, but the new high capacity auto siphon I got only takes about 5 minutes, so I don't know how much time I would actually save, although if I let the cool wort splash into the fermenter through the funnel I might be able to skip shaking the crap out of the carboy to aerate.

Anybody else do some brewing this weekend?

Mission Aborted

2008-01-01T19:13:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year!

My original plan for this break was to bottle my cherry beer (The Full Monty) first, then brew my Bourbon Brown and a Wee Heavy. I was dying to finally test the new turkey fryer and the immersion chiller and new glass primary (#2) that Santa brought me. Because of family stuff and food induced laziness, the bottling was put off even before Kris Kringle visited. To get in the brewing spirit, Eli and I made a pilgrimage to Northern Brewer last Friday, where I picked up their Wee Heavy kit and the ingredients for an American Brown Ale that I designed. He's an awesome little helper; he had a lot of fun helping me pick out my grains and run the mill in the grain room. I made both yeast starters on Saturday morning and also steamed an ounce of oak chips that are steeping in 5 ounces of Makers Mark right now, waiting to be tossed in the secondary of the brown ale. The plan was to brew both batches on New Year's Day, but the temp never got above 5 degrees today. That's too cold for me to stand outside and brew 2 batches, so I bitched out. Instead, I bottled The Full Monty today, and set up my turkey fryer stand and the hoses and fittings for the immersion chiller. So, brew day has been moved to Saturday.

I do have 2 questions for the loyal readers of this blog (all 2 of you): Do you use yeast starters? If so, how often? I'm trying to figure out what to do with the starters I made. They'll be 7 days old by the time they're pitched, so they'll be dormant I'm guessing. Should I let them ferment out for another day, then toss them in the fridge and maybe add some more DME on Friday? Or, should I just let them hang out and pitch them as is?

Preparing for the break

2007-12-20T10:48:00.000-06:00

Alright, so it's almost Christmas break and I'm trying to make room for the inaugural batches that I hope to brew on my new burner. Here's what I've been up to:

Last Friday I bottled my Abbey Blonde Ale. Originally this was Northern Brewer's Lefse Blonde kit but I dropped it down to 4 gallons because my 6 gallon primary was occupied and I wanted to bump up the gravity. I think this was the first beer I ever brewed that I didn't rack to secondary. At the time I was reading on various forums that many brewers do this to let the yeast finish the job, so I figured what the heck. When I was bottling it didn't look super clear, but the yeast was pretty flocculant so I didn't bring too much of the cake to the bottling bucket when I racked it. We'll see what happens after conditioning. Has anyone out there skipped the secondary? Do you do it often? Just curious.
On Sunday I racked my British Bitter to secondary on top of some cherries. This beer started out as Northern Brewer's British Bitter kit but I added an extra half pound of DME and a pound of brown sugar just for fun. I didn't feel like springing for the Oregon beer-specific can of cherries, and was worried that the cherry juice I was eyeing would dilute my precious brew, so I ended up using 4 14.5 ounce cans of Oregon Fruit Products Tart Cherry pie filling. They're Montmorency cherries packed in water, no preservatives, no added sugar. I'm going to call this one "The Full Monty". I made a stupid mistake though: when I racked into the secondary I filled it up pretty much to the top and after a few hours I noticed that the beer has now traveled about 6 inches up my blowoff tube. Whoops! I'm pretty happy that I did think ahead and throw the blowoff tube on instead of the airlock though, otherwise I'd have a pretty big mess on my hands. I'm hoping to bottle this one right after Christmas.
Last weekend I picked up "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels. Wow. What. An. Awesome. Book. It has a ridiculous amount of information and charts and graphs that are way over my head, but the second part of the book breaks down each individual style, gives a history of how the style evolved, and then analyzes beers from that style that made it to the second round of the National Homebrew Competition in 1993 and 1994. That makes it a little dated, but not enough to detract from the book's value. Daniels then looks at all those recipes and tells you that X% used X malt in X quantity, and X% of the beers used X ounces of X hops at X time during the boil, etc. It's a really cool book. I can see using this for the rest of my brewing career. It's got a ton of information that I can use right now to get away from kits with some confidence, but enough technical information to keep me busy if I ever figure out what the hell he's talking about. I strongly recommend you pick this up, you won't be disappointed.

What brews do you have on deck?

Hop Shortage

2007-12-10T20:16:00.000-06:00

So I had the pleasure of spending a few hours at the Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis on Saturday night. I ate their 7 Corners burger with smoked bacon and oatmeal stout BBQ sauce and washed it down with many many beers. I tried their Wee Heavy and Amarillo Amber with dinner, then Black H20 stout, Hope & King Scotch Ale, another Wee Heavy, and another Amarillo Amber while throwing darts.

As we're throwing darts, a guy sitting by the fireplace behind us asks us if we know a guy we work with, turns out he's from the same town. This guy (can't remember the name, a little hazy by that time) turns out to be the bar manager (I think) and we get in a conversation about the brewing operation.

The hop shortage ended up being a pretty big part of the conversation, and he told me that pint prices would be going up by less than a buck on some beers as a result. The thing that struck me though was that despite all the freaking out I've been reading about on various forums, Town Hall is expanding. Again, my memory is hazy, but I'm pretty sure the guy said they were going to be doubling their capacity to keep up with demand. So even though hops may be hard to come by for a while, good beer is still being made.

What are you making or drinking right now?

1st draft

2007-12-10T18:45:00.000-06:00

Alright, so it's my first attempt at a blog. I attended the TIES workshop last weekend and learned how to set up a blog. Thinking that someday I'll bring blogging to my classroom somehow but wanting to get some experience first, I decided to dedicate a blog to my favorite pasttimes: brewing, drinking, thinking and talking about beer. Hopefully a few of my homebrewing and/or beer drinking buddies stop by, strangers are welcome also. If all else fails, at least by blogging I can stop bugging my wife about this habit of mine.