Ordinary Bitter

Last Saturday was brew day for me. I finally got around to a style I've been meaning to brew since August, the Ordinary Bitter.

Here is what the bjcp has to say about the ordinary bitter:

Medium to high bitterness. Most have moderately low to moderately high
fruity esters. Moderate to low hop flavor (earthy, resiny, and/or floral UK
varieties typically, although US varieties may be used). Low to medium maltiness
with a dry finish. Caramel flavors are common but not required. Balance is often
decidedly bitter, although the bitterness should not completely overpower the
malt flavor, esters and hop flavor. Generally no diacetyl, although very low
levels are allowed.

I went with a pretty basic recipe for this. Nothing fancy, for a 6 gallon batch at 70%:

• 7.00 lb Maris Otter
• 1.30 lb Crystal 15L
• 1.00 lb Victory Malt
• .85 oz Northern Brewer [8.50%] (90 min)
• .75 oz East Kent Goldings [4.00%] (30 min)
• .60 oz East Kent Goldings [4.00%] (0 min)
• 1 whirlfloc (10 min)
• 2 liter starter of WLP005 British Ale

Estimated OG: 1.040
IBUs: 31.6
Color: 7.7 SRM
BU:GU ratio: 0.787

I mashed at 154° for 60 mins and boiled for 90 mins.

The 2 liter starter was probably overkill for a beer this small, but I bought the yeast back in July so I wanted to make sure I had a good supply of viable yeast.

I'm sure I did now, because I went from 1.039 to 1.011 in 48 hours. I checked on it Monday night and was surprised that the Krausen had fallen already and the yeast had dropped out. I thiefed a sample and got the 1.011 reading. Not bad!

I'm going to leave it a couple of days more, then rack to a keg with a half ounce of east kent goldings to give it a little more aroma.

Should be ready to drink next week!

California Common

I brewed up a california common back in August. A california common is the proper name for what is also known as steam beer.

Steam beer was a beer originally produced in California around the turn of the century. German immigrants to the bay area setup breweries to supply beer to all the local workers. Germans have a long lagering tradition and would naturally try to apply their lager knowledge to the new beer they were producing on the west coast.

Unfortunately, there were no cool, damp caves as in Germany, nor was there any readily available source of ice to keep the beer cold. So, they did the best they could and produced lager beer at moderate temperatures (60-65°) instead of the cooler temperatures a lager would normally require (40-50°).

The result was steam beer, now known as the California Common.

My California Common turned out well. It took a long time to fully ferment, nearly a month in the primary. It has now been in a keg at cold temps for another month and is quite tasty. It has a nice creamy character and clean finish. The Northern Brewer hops that are the trademark of this style give this beer a slightly odd 'spicy' taste. So it's initially a surprising taste, but it grows on you.

Schwarzbier

Yesterday was not the best brew day I ever had. I was creating a schwarzbier and was pretty excited about it. I started to mill my grains but my Barley Crusher kept binding up. The roller that spins free was completely stuck. I had to take the whole thing apart, clean it and put it back together. That got me through about 5 more pounds before I had to break it down again.

Well, I got through that, got all my grains crushed and was ready to dough in. I added the grains to the water and was thinking to myself that it looked awfully runny. But I figured Beersmith has always figured mash volumes correctly, so I went with it. After starting the mash I went to double check the volumes and realized that Beersmith had indeed calculated them correctly, but I was reading them off the wrong recipe. D'oh!

I decided to just continue on. I figured there was nothing to be done now. I headed out to grab some breakfast while the grains were mashing and realized my car had been broken into. Fantastic! It took me a good hour or more to get that dealt with (calling police, cancelling a credit card that was stolen, etc) and by the time I got back to the beer, it had been mashing for 2 hours. Oops.

Oh well, I drained the mash tun, sparged and soldiered on. Started the boil, turned my back for a second and had my first ever boil over. yay!

I finally got it finished and into the carboy. Ended up overshooting my target OG by 6 points. 1.059 instead of 1.053. Guess that one will be a little stronger than intended.

Still it had a beautiful color and smelled fantastic. I fed it a healthy slurry of German Bock yeast and hopefully will soon have 5 gallons of delicious beer!

I hope you like fruit!

I brewed what should have been a very nice Irish Red a while back. The grain bill looks good, the hopping seemed right, but the one unknown was the yeast. White Labs WLP004 Irish Ale yeast. It's an Irish beer, so Irish Ale yeast should be just the ticket, right? Wrong! This yeast produced a host of fruity flavors in the beer. It completely upsets the balance and makes the beer hard to drink.

I'm disappointed, but I'm not going to give up so easily. I'm going to brew the same recipe again, but substitute either a clean Ale yeast or a clean lager yeast. There is a good beer hiding in this recipe. I'll find it yet.

Mike's Milkshake

My next project is to make a creamy smooth porter. At least that was the plan when I started the recipe. In the end, it should be porter-like, but I've decided to make it a lager. I'll use a german lager yeast to hopefully high-light the malts and keep it easy-drinking.

Here it is - Mike's Milkshake Porter

Real Men Drink Blueberry Beer

I brewed a Wheat Beer last month. The recipe calls for an ounce of blueberry extract to be added. I was a little gun-shy about adding blueberry to my nice beer so I went ahead and kegged it without the extract. It tasted fine without it, a little bland perhaps but OK.

Well, I got curious and decided to add a couple drops of the blueberry extract to a glass and pour the beer on top of it. Much to my surprise it tasted great. Gave it a nice tang that blended with the coriander nicely.

So, now that I'm a true believer in the blueberry I bled the pressure out of the keg and added two capfuls of the extract. I probably could have done more, but decided to err on the side of caution.

Jamil's California Common

Here is the California Common that I brewed yesterday:

Steamed Ant
Brew Type: All Grain
Style: California Common
Brewer: Joshua
Batch Size: 6.00 gal
Boil Volume: 7.35 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %


Ingredients
9.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
2.00 lb Munich Malt (8.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Victory Malt (25.0 SRM)
0.13 lb Chocolate Malt - Light (200.0 SRM)
1.14 oz Northern Brewer [7.30 %] (60 min) Hops 25.3 IBU
0.94 oz Northern Brewer [7.30 %] (15 min) Hops 10.4 IBU
1.00 oz Northern Brewer [7.30 %] (0 min) Hops -
1 Pkgs San Francisco Lager (White Labs #WLP810) Yeast-Lager

Beer Profile
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.053 SG (1.048-1.054 SG)
Measured Original Gravity: 1.052 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.017 SG (1.011-1.014 SG)
Estimated Color: 11.1 SRM (10.0-14.0 SRM)
Bitterness: 35.7 IBU (30.0-45.0 IBU)
Estimated Alcohol by Volume: 4.77 % (4.50-5.50 %)
Mash Profile Name: Batch Sparge
Mash Tun Weight: 9.00 lb
Mash Grain Weight: 12.63 lb
Mash PH: 5.4 PH
Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F
Sparge Water: 5.42 gal
Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE
Mash Temp: 154°F

Damn you Beersmith!

Brewed a California Common yesterday, as per usual I just followed the mash steps from Beersmith. This has always worked out well for me after some initial setup to get my equipment volumes and boil-off right.

Well, it seems I found a quirk in Beersmith. I was doing so many 90 many boils that I set my equipment to 90 minute boils (and forgot I had done so). Well, as it turns out, if your equipment is set to 90 minutes, the recipe will give you the water quantity for 90 minutes even if the recipe is set to 60. So I overshot my volume, by a lot. Oops.

On the plus side, I had tightened down my crush for this batch and still got 1.052 when I was expecting 1.053 for a smaller volume. So things should still turn out OK.

I love that beer is so forgiving

So a few posts ago, I mentioned how I had screwed up my Irish Stout recipe. I ended up brewing the beer short a half pound of Flaked Barley. The great thing about beer is that if you throw malted grain, water, hops and yeast together you are pretty much always going to get beer. The ingredients want to become beer.

Well, I kegged my stout last week and let it carbonate for 6 or 7 days. And now, it's pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. It's not perfect, it could use some more body but it has a nice smooth flavor. I think I did a good job of balancing the hops against the roast barley, so it doesn't have a harsh flavor to it.

It's major failing, really, is intentional. It is a one note beer. It has a roasted flavor, that's it. No complex flavor profile here, it's just nice and roasty. No hop aroma, no malty flavor, no fruity esters. The idea behind this beer was to get a nice basic stout that I can then start playing with. I will probably brew this multiple times in the future, adding different grains, hops, yeast and seeing what the result is.

It's lagering time!

After months of brewing ales, it's time to tackle lagers. For those unsure of the difference, Ales and lagers are differentiated by the yeast used. Ale yeast is a top fermenting yeast that works at room temperature (60-70°). Ales tend to have more esters that cause for fruit and spicy tastes. Lager yeasts are bottom fermenting and are usually fermented at lower temperatures (40-50°). They are then stored (lagered) for long periods at cold temperatures. Lagers have cleaner flavor profiles and highlight the malt and hops more than the yeast.

I'm trying a lager because I want to have beer around that is more newbie friendly. So I'm doing an American Pilsner, loosely based on Sierra Nevada's Summerfest. This is not really clone, more just in the same style. It uses the same malts and hops, so should be in the ballpark.

Here is the recipe I will be using:
Slice of Summer
Classic American Pilsner

Type:All Grain
Batch Size: 6.00 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70%

Ingredients
10.80 lb Pale Malt (Domestic 2 Row)
0.60 lb Munich Malt
0.60 oz Saaz [4.00%] (60 min)
0.60 oz Pearle [8.00%] (60 min)
1.20 oz Saaz[4.00%] (15 min)
1.20 oz Saaz[4.00%] (1 min)
1 Whirlfloc Tablet
1 Package German Lager Yeast

I'll be brewing this in about 2 weeks, should be just about the right time for my batch of Irish Red to begin cold conditioning. Since I store all my fermenting beer in the same chest freezer, there are some logistical issues with brewing both ales and lagers at the same time, but I'm sure I can work those out.

Shades of Red

This past sunday, I tried my hand at an Irish Red Ale. This is the first of many potential "Wedding Beers" that I will be brewing. Basically, I will be brewing beer for my wedding next year and am spending the time until then brewing various recipes and evaluating the results. So in a nutshell, I have to brew a lot of beer and then drink a lot of beer. How horrible!

Shades of Red
Brew Type: All Grain
Date: 8/19/2007
Style: Irish Red Ale
Brewer: Joshua
Batch Size: 6.00 gal
Boil Volume: 8.06 gal
Boil Time: 90 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %

Ingredients
10.23 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
0.58 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
0.58 lb Carared (Weyermann) (24.0 SRM)
0.15 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)
1.50 oz Fuggles [4.00 %] (90 min)
0.60 oz Goldings, East Kent [4.00 %] (30 min)
0.60 oz Goldings, East Kent [4.00 %] (15 min)
1.00 Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min)
1 Pkgs Irish Ale (White Labs #WLP004)

Beer Profile
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.050 SG (1.044-1.060 SG)
Measured Original Gravity: 1.050 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.014 SG (1.010-1.014 SG)
Estimated Color: 11.9 SRM (9.0-18.0 SRM)
Bitterness: 26.0 IBU (17.0-28.0 IBU)
Estimated Alcohol by Volume: 4.77 % (4.00-6.00 %)

Mash Profile
Name: Batch Sparge
Mash Tun Weight: 9.00 lb
Mash Grain Weight: 11.54 lb
Mash PH: 5.4 PH
Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F
Sparge Water: 6.5 gal
Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE

Original Recipe created by Fred Dujour.

Hopefully this beer turns out to be a malty, easy drinking beer. I'm hoping for something that is palatable to people who aren't used to drinking much beer outside of Bud/Miller/Coors (BMC). For people who already eschew the macro-breweries I will hopefully have more bold styles on display.

On to the brew notes! This is my 5th All Grain beer and things are finally working pretty smoothly. I heated 14.5 qts of water to 166° and put that in my Coleman extreme cooler. I doughed in and gave it all a good stir, I was aiming for 152° and hit it pretty close. After stirring a lot to eliminate hotspots, I was reading between 151.8° and 152.5°. Close enough for me. I did a longer mash at 75 minutes (mostly because I got distracted and forgot), then collected my first runnings. I sparged with 6.5 gallons of 168° and got to my pre-boil volume of 8.10 gallons (or there abouts, I don't measure that exact).

This is where I first started to feel good about the brew, I was looking for a pre-boil gravity of 1.038 and sure enough, I was right on target.

I boiled for 90 minutes then started cooling. I cooled as low as I could with my water (~75°), then aerated and put it into the chest freezer overnight. This morning it was quite cool at 52°, I pitched my yeast and will let it warm up to 62° or so. I'm aiming low because I don't want many esters in this beer. I want the malt flavor to be dominant.

I deviated a bit from the original recipe. The original recipe called for a decoction mash, I'm far too lazy for that. I switched that up to a simple infusion mash.

Hopefully, it still turns out well.

I'm an idiot

So a few weeks ago I brewed an Irish Stout from a recipe that I put together. I posted it on this blog actually. Well, that recipe was wrong. I got the Roasted Barley and the Flaked Barley mixed up. And then I went and ordered my ingredients for the wrong recipe. The real recipe calls for 2.5 pounds of Flaked Barley and 1.3 pounds of Roasted Barley. What did I order? 3 pounds of Roasted Barley and 2 pounds of Flaked Barley.

Worse yet, I didn't notice until I went to brew it. So we ended up with half a pound less Flaked Barley than I intended. It's not the end of the world, it will still be beer, but it will have less body than I wanted.

Someday I'll brew the recipe correctly.

Not so Amber Ale...

A few months back I brewed the all grain version of Northern Brewer's Amber Ale. The beer I ended up with was nothing like an Amber ale. It's pale yellow with a slight malty taste and little to no hop aroma. Disappointing at best. I originally thought I had just screwed up in the brewing process, but let's take a closer look at the recipe:

• 9# Rahr 2-Row Pale
• 1# Caravienne
• 1 oz Northern Brewer (60 minutes)
• 1 oz Hallertauer (1 min)
• Wyeast 1056

Mashed at 153° for 60 minutes, skipped the mash out step, I let it ferment for 3 weeks, then kegged and pressurized at 12 psi.

I'm not sure what they were thinking but there is no way that 9 pounds of 2-row and a 1 pound of caravienne were going to make an amber colored beer. Beersmith estimates a color of 6.2 SRM, a golden yellow. I have to agree that Beersmith is right on with that. The beer I have is almost straw colored, it looks almost like a pilsner at first glance.

Basically what I have is a very lightly hopped Pale Ale. It's not bad, it's certainly very drinkable, but it's also very boring. I won't be making that again.

Kegerator Fun!

Today I finally had the time to finish my kegerator. I didn't have a ton of room, so I went with a Sanyo 4912 mini fridge, which has room for 2 five gallon cornelius kegs and 1 five pound CO2 tank. I was very surprised at just how easy it was to convert this refrigerator to a kegerator. I purchased 4 kegs from morebeer as well as the miscellaneous tubing and connections that I needed. I purchased the draft tower and two tap handles from Northern Brewer.

I didn't take pictures of the process, but it went pretty simply. I took the plastic top off the fridge and turned it upside down. I used a dremel to remove the plastic fins underneath in an 8" x 8" square. I cut a piece of 1/2" plywood to fit in this space and placed it inside. I placed the cover back on the fridge and then carefully drilled a hole with a 2 3/4" hole saw, being careful to avoid the coolant line that was 7" from the back of the fridge. Once I had a hole all the way through to the inside I marked four holes for the screws to the draft tower. I carefully drilled these holes through the plastic top and the plywood support. I hammered tee nuts into the holes. I then applied a thick bead of silicon caulk to the plywood and affixed it permanently to the plastic top and screwed the tower in.

After that it was just a matter of putting the plastic top back on (and putting some foil tape on the hole I drilled to keep the insulation in). Now I have my very own kegerator. On the left is a pretty decent pale ale; on the right a beer that is pretty crappy for the amber ale it is supposed to be, but as a beer not bad at all.

Building an Irish Stout

My recent foray back to the first type of beer I brewed had me thinking about another beer I'd like to try to improve on: the Dry Irish Stout. This was another extract kit I bought from Northern Brewer. Rather than revisit the kit, I thought I'd build a recipe from scratch. After all, Irish stout's are pretty basic beers. The one thing I really want out of this is to make it finish very very dry in order to bring the roasted barley flavor to the forefront. So I sat down in front of Beersmith at lunch today and banged out a quick recipe.

9 lbs of Maris Otter Pale Malt. This is a nice English base malt. Perfect for this type of beer.
2.57 lbs of Roasted Barley. This is going to give us that nice dark color as well as a roasted barley flavor.
1.3 lbs of Flaked Barley. This is going to add proteins to the beer, producing a thick body and help in head formation/retention.
1.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50%] at 60 mins. Nice bittering hop.
1.00 oz East Kent Goldings [5.00%] at 20 mins. Classic English hop. Should add just a touch of flavor and aroma.
Will use either Wyeast 1084 or 1056. I've heard too many people say that 1084 introduces too much diacetyl and even one report of a pineapple flavor. I may stick to the nice neutral chico yeast for the first go around.

That gave me the basic recipe to start with, but I really want that dry finish. So I tweaked it a little more:

5 lbs of Maris Otter Pale Malt.
2 lbs of Corn Sugar. Will have minimal affect on flavor, but will help lower the final gravity.
2.57 lbs of Roasted Barley.
1.3 lbs of Flaked Barley.
1.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50%] at 60 mins.
1.00 oz East Kent Goldings [5.00%] at 20 mins.
Wyeast 1084 or 1056.

Basically, I am still aiming for an OG of 1.050 but am using 2 lbs of Dextrose (Corn Sugar) to get there instead of relying solely on the grains. I dropped the Maris Otter down to 5 lbs to compensate. The sugar is 100% fermentable unlike the sugars contributed by the grains. This will bring the final gravity down lower and really high-light the roasted grains. I might throw a small handful of Black Patent in there too and ignore it's gravity contributions. But maybe I'll keep it simple this time and just go with this basic recipe and tweak it after I've tasted the final product.

Amber Again...

My very first attempt at making beer was an Amber Ale extract kit from Northern Brewer. As certain people can attest, this beer was not good. It was down right awful. Of the paltry 35 bottles of the stuff I made, I think I still have 25 left. I have a feeling they will sit there unloved until I finally get around to dumping them out and using the bottles.

I still like the idea of having a nice Amber ale around, so I decided to have another go at this one. I figured I'd made a good amount of progress in my brewing skills and can better control fermentation temps now. So I picked up another Amber Ale kit from Northern Brewer. This time I went for an all grain kit, rather than extract. That alone will guarantee that this tastes different from the first one.

I brewed this up on the 4th of July in the early morning. I started at 7 am to beat the heat, but it was still scorching hot by the time I finished up around noon.

I missed my OG by 3 points, was expecting 1.047 got 1.044. This was due to overshooting my water amount a bit. I ended up with almost 5 1/2 gallons of water in the carboy and left another 1/2 gallon of break material in the kettle.

5 days later and fermentation is starting to die down. Looking forward to seeing how this turned out. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Cream Ale

This is a great Summer beer! Nice smooth flavor, slightly sweet finish, light on the hops. A mere 4.6% ABV. Perfect for nice hot afternoons after mowing the lawn or cleaning the garage. I love this beer. It's a close race between this and my Pale Ale for my favorite beer.

I like this so much that I brewed it again last week and plan on brewing it one more time this summer. I bottled this in 22oz bottles and I think that was a great decision. It is so light and easy to drink that 22oz is the perfect serving size.

Now I wish I could do something about the chill haze I'm experiencing with this. Maybe the next batch will be better as I used Irish Moss on it.

Another new toy

I picked up a magnetic mixer off of eBay for a decent price. It came out of a lab somewhere, so it's a little beat up, but it works. It's fun to play with too. I made a starter today on my lunch break in preparation for brewing tomorrow. I usually make my starters 3 or 4 days in advance, but I hoped that the mixer would help shave some time off that.

I was right. I came home to a beautiful sight. The starter was in full krausen and was finished fermenting just hours later. I snapped a picture of the impressive foam I achieved.

I should have nice healthy yeast for tomorrow. I'll be brewing another batch of Cream Ale. I'm loving this stuff so far. Perfect for the warm weather we are in. I should have enough to last me the summer at this rate. With the last batch, I accepted that this is a guzzler of a beer and bottled it all in 22 oz bottles instead of 12. At 4.6% ABV it's not too bad, not quite a session beer, but close.

Holy Crap! That's good!

I took a hydrometer reading of my Imperial Stout today. Activity had slowed down quite a bit and I wasn't seeing much action. I was afraid that with a beer this big that I had a stuck fermentation, I didn't think that I could fully ferment out a 1.081 beer that fast.

Well, I was wrong. The reading had me right at 1.021 for an apparent attenuation of 74%, the yeast I used is estimated at 69-73% so I'm already well above that. I snagged a small taste of it, I made sure it was a small taste because I was doing this on my lunch break and it is 8% alcohol by volume. Wow is it good! Perhaps a bit bitter, but that should mellow out in time.

I'm going to let this sit another week in the primary and then it's off to a secondary for 2 or 3 months. Only then will it go to bottles. I have plenty of beer sitting around anyway. I have about 150 bottles of homebrew at the moment and another 5 gallons that can be bottled next week (good for 50 more bottles).

Imperial Stout

Last Saturday I brewed my 2nd to last extract brew. An Imperial Stout that I got from Northern Brewer.

Here is the run-down of the recipe:

• 0.5 lbs Roasted Barley
• 0.5 lbs Black Malt
• 0.5 lbs Chocolate Malt
  
• 12 lbs Amber Malt Syrup
  
• 1 oz Galena (60 min)
• 1 oz Fuggles (45 min)
• 1 oz Willamette (10 min)
  
• Wyeast #1728 Scottish Ale Yeast
  

A few days before brewday I took the yeast out of the fridge and made a 1 liter starter with it. To make the starter I just took a cup of dry malt extract and added it to 900 ml of boiling water. I let it boil for about 15 minutes and then crash cooled it in the sink. I pitched the yeast in when the temp had fallen to 70 degrees and let it ferment out for a few days. I ended up with a nice slurry of yeast on the bottom of the flask and some really bad mini-beer.




Next I had to deal with the grains. I had a pound and a half of grains that needed to be crushed. In prior brews I had put the steeping grains in a zip-lock back and attempted to crush them with a rolling pin. It worked, kind of. Now I have my lovely barley crusher, so I used that to crush the grains.

After crushing, the grains had a nice coffee like aroma to them. They also turned everything they touched black. Since I'm looking to gain color from them, that's a good thing. The dog was disappointed though. On the last brew, I used honey malt for flavor and the dog acted like it was candy. She loved it. She took one sniff of these and turned up her nose. No accounting for taste I guess.

With all my prep work done, it was time to start making the beer. I do all my brewing out on the back porch with a patio burner. I used to use filtered water from the fridge in the kitchen, but I'm lazy and that took too long. For the last couple of brews I've been using tap water from the faucet out back. I use a food grade hose, so the water doesn't taste like rubber and I haven't seen any detrimental affects from the tap water.

I add about 7 gallons of water to the pot in the hope that I will end up with 5-5.5 gallons. I start the flame and start waiting. When adjusted properly the burner will get 7 gallons of water to a boil in about 30 minutes. Today, I had the flame too low and had to adjust it after 20 minutes. Once I did that things started moving along. While that was happening, I retired to the kitchen and put a quart and a half of water on the stove. I let that warm up to 165 degrees, then removed it from the stove, added the steeping grains, covered, and then placed it in a tent made of towels to keep the heat in. I let that sit for 30 minutes. Once that was done, I added it to my now boiling water outside.

Now it's time to start adding ingredients. I have everything out and ready.

The extract:

The hops:

I add the malt extract to the boiling water. Slowly. malt extract is thick, it has a molasses like consistency and takes quite a while to get out of the jugs. Once the majority of it is out of the jug, I add some of the hot water and give it a good shake. That helps me get every last drop out of there. I turn the flame off while I do this to help prevent boil-over. The water reacts quite violently when you add the extract and it's easy to get the pot to boil over. That's one of the reasons I'm no longer allowed to do this in the kitchen. The other is the smell. As soon as you add the extract, it puts out a strong smell of malt and sugar. It's overpowering and lingers for hours. I think that more than anything got me kicked out of the house.

I start the flame back up and wait until I have a nice rolling boil. I do this uncovered as the boiling wort will give off Dimethyl Sulfides. If the pot was covered these chemical compounds would collect on the lid and drip back into the pot, being reabsorbed by the wort. This leads to a vegetable like taste that is often associated with cooked corn or cabbage. I like corn as much as the next guy, but I don't want my beer to taste like it!

Once I have a nice rolling boil, I put in the Galena hops and start an hour timer. You'll note in the recipe that all the hop additions have a time marked next to them. This tells you when to add them to the wort. Wort is typically boiled for 60 mins, so the hop additions are marked by how much time is left in the boil. So being marked at 60 mins, means you throw them in with 60 minutes left of the boil, so the 45 minutes addition would be 15 minutes later, the 30 minute would be 15 after that, etc. Pretty easy, but seems backwards at first.

Not much to do while the wort is boiling, so I start sanitizing equipment for the later steps. First up I get a 6.5 gallon acid carboy out and start sanitizing it.

And of course, my help helper is there at every step of the way. Mostly getting under foot and trying to see if she can kill me with the glass carboy.

I also get the wort chiller out and ready to go. I use an immersion chiller (IC). The IC works by running tap water through a copper coil that is immersed in the wort. This acts as a big heat sink and carries the heat away in the water. It uses a lot of water, but works well and gets my boiling wort to 70 degrees in about 40 minutes. I don't bother sanitizing it, I just throw it in the pot with about 20 minutes left in the boil. That kills all the nasties on it.

Once the boil is done and the wort has been chilled, it's time to put it in the carboy. So I grab my trusty (and freshly sanitized) auto-siphon and start moving the wort from the kettle to the carboy. It takes a good 15 minutes to transfer, but it's easier than trying to lift and pour the kettle without spilling it. I use the opportunity to grab a sample and get a hydrometer reading. I ended up with a reading of 1.087. A pretty big beer. I tasted the sample out of curiousity. Yuck! Too sweet! Should be much better once the yeast have had a chance to do their work.

Once all the wort is in the carboy, it's time to bring it inside for the next step. With a beer this big, healthy fermentation is important. So I am taking lots of steps to ensure the yeast have everything they need to thrive. As I showed above, I created a starter to make sure I had enough yeast, now I am aerating to make sure the yeast have enough O2 to do the job. O2 helps the yeast build thick cell walls, this enables them to withstand the highly acidic environment and helps them multiply better. If the walls are too thin, they will die upon multiplying. I use an aquariam pump attached to a stainless steel diffusion stone. There is an inline filter in there to make sure I don't pull bacteria out of the air. I let this run for 45 minutes to an hour to put plenty of 02 in to the solution.

Once that is done I pitch my yeast and let them do their work! I place the carboy into a bath tub of water to keep the temperature around 65 and then I wait, and wait, and wait. That's it. Simple!

I'm glad I rememberd the boy scout motto! (Always Be Prepared)

OK, so I was never actually a boy scout. But it's still good advice. I brewed up a Russian Imperial Stout over the weekend. I took as many steps as I could to ensure a good brew and good fermentation. I prepared a half gallon starter in advance, I aerated the wort well, I brought the temp down to just below ferment temps before pitching, etc.

For every beer prior to this one, a standard airlock has been just fine. But in the back of my brain this weekend, I began to think that maybe, just maybe I should have a blowoff tube ready for this beer. So I had it out and sanitized and boy am I glad I did!

Sunday, the day after brew day, I checked on the stout early in the morning. It had a nice solid head of krausen on it at that time, nothing really too impressive, but nice. I did some chores for a couple of hours and decided to check on it before heading out to run some errands. Good thing too, the krausen had risen several inches and was just coming into contact with the airlock. I grabbed my blowoff tube and installed that in place of the airlock. 24 hours later, the tube is full of gunk. Gunk that would have been in my airlock, clogging it up.

Whew, disaster averted!

Cream Ale

My cream ale has been fermenting for 6 days now. The bulk of the fermentation appears to be finished, so I pulled a sample yesterday and again today. I got a reading of 1.012 yesterday and one of 1.011 today. So it appears that it's not quite done yet today.

This brew is considerably lighter than the ones I usually go for. It has a nice malty character, with just a hint of honey in it. The sample I tried yesterday also had a citrusy finish to it, but that seems to be gone today. Hopefully a little of that comes through in the final beer. Either way this should be a great summer thirst quencher.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one will finish a little dryer, below 1.010 would be great. While I could probably rack it now, I'm going to let it sit a while. I might give the carboy a good shake and see if I can rouse the yeast from their nap.

I'm hoping it clears up a bit too, if it doesn't I'll throw some gelatin in the secondary and give it a couple of weeks. I want this one to be crystal clear if possible.

Oops

I intended to do a step by step photo blog of my last brew session, but I completely forgot. It was boring anyway, only one hop addition. I spent most of my time waiting.

I'll try to remember for this weekend's project. It should be a good one, a nice big Imperial Stout.

My first brew and the importance of temperature control

I decided to grab a bottle of my Amber Ale last night to see how it is coming along. It's been in the bottles nearly 3 weeks now and should be fully carbonated. I poured it into a glass, leaving the dredges behind. Still quite hazy, good head, nice carbonation. Looks like an amber ale, smells like an amber ale, does it taste like an amber ale? No, no it doesn't. After the first sip, I noted right away that the harsh alcohol taste was gone. I then noted that it tasted like someone dumped a whole crate of strawberries in it. Maybe a few bananas too. That might work for a hefeweizen, but that's no good for an amber.

I know where I went wrong here. It was just too warm. Being new to this, I didn't realize that the fermentation process would boost temps by 2-4 degrees. So while it was sitting in the low 70's, it pushed itself well above 75 for the bulk of the ferment. It and the Irish stout were the worst off, but the beers that follow have been far more closely monitored for temp.

I already picked up a temperature controller and will be grabbing a small chest freezer in the near future. That will allow me to keep a steady temperature and avoid this in the future. It also have the advantage of allowing me to lager. I'm looking forward to doing an Oktoberfest.

Racking to the Secondary

After 11 days fermenting, I decided to rack (move) the Pale Ale over to a smaller carboy for clearing and conditioning. It had a vigorous and fairly lengthy fermentation and could probably use another week or two to let the yeast clean up the beer a bit. While I could have done that in the primary, I need the larger carboy for this weekend's brew and had an hour to spare today.

The name of the game in brewing is sanitation. So the first thing I did was fill a bucket full of warm water, added some star-san and threw everything I was going to need into it.

I moved the pale ale from his bath-tub resting place and put him on the kitchen counter. I placed a newly clean and sanitized 5 gallon carboy onto a bucket directly below. I put two wedges underneath the Ale to help get more of the beer and less of the yeast. The ale ended up a really nice copper color. A little darker than I wanted, but still quite nice. The hop aroma was almost overpowering, the entire upper section of the carboy was coated in remnants of the hop pellets. The ferment was vigorous indeed! I thiefed a sample and took a hydrometer reading. 1.012. Spot on! As per usual, I quaffed the sample down. Wooo! Those hops are strong yet. A couple more weeks and they will fade quite a bit and hopefully leave me with a nice balanced beer. Still, aside from a strong hop flavor, the brew is quite clean. No unusual flavors. Bodes well.

I used my autosiphon to start the transfer to the secondary. This is a handy tool, has a small tip that allows it to sit a small bit from the bottom and avoid much of the trub. While I want some yeast to come along with the beer, I don't need the whole of it. Just a few to clean it up a bit, and of course to carbonate once we get to the bottles.

The transfer takes about 20 minutes, it gets quite slow at the end. But slow is better. I want to avoid any unnecessary splashing that might add oxygen to the beer. Nobody likes beer that tastes like cardboard.

Eventually I get it all transferred over. I'll place it back into the bath-tub and let it rest another week or two at 65 degrees. The into the bottles.

By the way, for anyone that uses glass carboys I highly recommend the brew hauler that you see on my carboys. 5 gallons of liquid is heavy and glass is quite slippery when wet. The last thing I want to do is drop a 5 gallon jug of beer on my foot. Messy and dangerous.

Well, that's all done! Beer is safely in it's new home and ready to be left alone for aging.

Now unfortunately, I have some cleaning to do.

52 Bottles of Beer on the Wall...

52 Bottles of beer. That's what I got out of my Irish Stout. At the time of bottling it still tasted a bit weak. Not bad, just watery. Hopefully carbonation will bring the flavors out.

Cooler Conversion

What do you get when you combine a 52-quart cooler, a toilet supply line, a ball valve and some miscellaneous brass connectors? A mash lauter tun!

I started with a Coleman Extreme 52-quart model that I picked up at Sears for $30.00.

I then made a trip to Home Depot to get a toilet supply line with a stainless steel braid, a 1/2" threaded connector, two 1/2" brass barbs and a ball valve.

I cut the ends off the supply line and removed the tubing from inside of it. To get the tubing out you really have to treat it like a chinese finger trap. Push in while you pull. It took a few minutes and I lost some blood in the process, but I got it out.

I then crimped one end of the stainless steel braid shut and attached the other end to one of the brass nipples with a hose clamp. I attached the hole thing to the threaded connector and shoved it through the hole that was left after removing the drain from the cooler.

I attached the ball valve and nipple to the other side, applied some silicone sealant to prevent leaks and I was done. Took maybe an hour of fiddling overall. Easy and cheap way to make a Mash Lauter Tun. This was my last obstacle for going all-grain. After I finish up my extract supplies, I'll be doing an all grain brew shortly after.

Bubbling Away Merrily...

My SNPA clone is fermenting nicely. It seems to come and go in waves. I had a strong fermentation at the beginning. It clogged up the airlock and nearly had me going for my blowoff tube, but the krausen began to fall and I figured it was about done. Not so! Two days later and it was again clogging the airlock. I think now it is finally nearing the finish line. I'll probably rack it to the secondary this weekend or early next week. Then I'm going to give it plenty of time to clear up while in secondary.

Looks pretty, doesn't it!

Next Batches

My carboys are all full up, but that doesn't stop me from planning my next couple of batches. I have the ingredients on hand for a Cream Ale and an Imperial Stout. The Cream Ale is a very light beer. It includes just 6 lbs of Pale syrup and some crystal malt. It's very lightly hopped and should make a great lawnmower beer. The Imperial is just about the opposite. It has a whopping 12 lbs of Amber syrup plus some roasted barley for flavor and color. It also takes a mountain of hops. This one I plan to let sit in the fermentor a long long time. I hope to get to one of these within a week or so.

Drinking my first brew.

Here it is. The first beer I created with my own two hands. It's a bit hazy, but I can deal with that. Just over one week in the bottle and it's really conditioned nicely. Still has a bit of 'bite' to it, but I think that will mellow out in a couple of weeks

I got Shawn to take one sip, and she scrunched her face up in the worst way. She was polite enough not to spit it out and I appreciate that. Bah, she never liked good beer anyway!

New Toys!

Crushing grains has always been a problem. I could either have the store crush the grains before shipping them, leaving me to the whims of the warehouse monkeys or could try to crush them myself using a ziplock bag and a rolling pin. Neither of these were particularly appealing and in neither case was I assured a good crush. The results from the warehouse were mixed and the rolling pin method tended to leave me with half whole grains and half flour.

So I ordered this bad boy. The Barley Crusher! (http://www.barleycrusher.com) Shipped out today. Can be either hand cranked or driven with a 3/8" drill. As I start making the move to all grain brewing this will come in quite handy.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

I decided my next brew would be an American Pale Ale (APA). Since the definitive APA is the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, I decided that would be the one to try and emulate. I found a recipe online to guide me. Once again it was an extract recipe using a few specialty grains.


Type: Extract
Date: 4/18/2007
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Brewer: Joshua
Boil Size: 6.50 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Equipment: Brew Pot (12 Gal)

5.50 lb Extra Light Dry Extract (3.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
0.50 oz Magnum [14.00%] (60 min)
0.50 oz Pearle [8.00%] (30 min)
0.80 oz Cascade [5.50%] (10 min)
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50%] (0 min)
1 Pkgs California Ale (White Labs #WLP001)

Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.049 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.054 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.011 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.9 %
Bitterness: 44.8 IBU
Calories: 43 cal/pint
Est Color: 9.7 SRM


This recipe makes use of a large amount of Cascade hops for aroma and flavor, while using Magnum and Perle to give the bulk of the bitterness.

I wasn't able to find Extra Light Dry Malt Extract (DME) here in Reno, so I had to make do with Light DME. I bought 6 lbs of Light DME at Reno Homebrewer. It shouldn't affect the flavor too much, but the beer will be considerably darker than I really wanted. I really should have used some clarifiers in this as it is such a light colored beer, but I didn't have any on hand. I can deal with hazy beer, I think.

This was the first beer that I did outside on my Bayou Classic patio burner. This thing puts out 155,000 BTUs and heats 7 gallons of water to a rolling boil in about 30-35 minutes. Took a fair amount of fiddling to get the air mixture right, but once I had it set I had a nice ring of blue flame.

Once boiling, I dumped in all 6 lbs of DME. It wasn't until after I was all done that I remembered I should have only put in 5.5 lbs. Oops. That will affect the Original Gravity (OG) that I was shooting for. Recipe estimated 1.049, punching a couple numbers into BeerSmith and I get 1.053 for 6lbs of DME. That will darken the beer some and give it more body, but should still turn out OK.

The boil was mostly uneventful. Added my hops at the appropriate times, at 20 mins I threw the immersion chiller in to sanitize it. I was able to cool the wort from boiling to 70° in about 30 minutes. It's nice to have good cold tap water here.

Once cooled I put it in my 6 gallon carboy. After boil-off I ended up with a hair over 5 gallons. Perfect. I took my hydrometer reading and came up with 1.054, adjusted for temperature. This is where I realized my mistake with the DME as I was expecting 1.049.

I threw in a yeast starter that I had made earlier in the week and by morning I was greeted with this lovely sight. Nice thick head of krausen on it, sitting at a perfect 65°.

The cats are particularly enjoying the beer making. They sit on the side of the tub and watch the bubbles in the airlock. Keeps them entertained for hours.

At the end of the day, as I was cleaning up, the wind picked up and blew my test vial and hydrometer off the table. Snapped the hydrometer in half. I guess I need a new one now.

What we currently have

Here is what I currently have going on

American Amber Ale. The style is somewhat similar to an American Pale Ale. A little less hoppy than a pale ale.

My first brew, made with a kit from Northern Brewer. This one was done as a partial boil, extract with specialty grains. After I boiled the grains, hops and extract I put it in the carboy along with 2.5 gallons of water. I completely forgot to top up with more water to account for boil-off. So I ended up with about 4 gallons of fairly strong beer. Which explains why my original gravity was so high. I was expecting 1.047 but ended up as 1.058.

After fermenting for 2 weeks it finished at 1.010 giving it a fairly high 6.3% ABV. It's currently sitting in bottles, I might crack one open sometime this week and see how it is going.


Dry Irish Stout. Think Guinness and you will have the right idea. In the carboy this one has a beautiful jet black color. Like motor oil. I remembered my top off water this time, and ended up with 5.5 gallons in the primary and just over 5 gallons when I racked it to the secondary. The original gravity on this one was expected to be 1.042, I overshot that a bit and ended up with 1.047. With all the water I added, I'm not sure how that happened. Still scratching my head over that one.

This one is currently on week 2 in the secondary fermenter. I will probably bottle it this weekend. It was tasting a little thin and watery last week, I'm hoping carbonation brings a lot more of the Roasted Barley flavor to the front. It has almost no hop flavor or aroma, but that's typical of the style.


Cream Stout. This is basically a clone of Sam Adam's Cream Stout. This is my first non-kit beer. This is also the first time I boiled all the water together and didn't top off with water at the end. 7 gallons of water takes a long time to boil on the stove!

I picked up a propane patio stove to use for future brews. It also gets the smell out of the kitchen. I rather liked having the house smell like malty beer all day, but Shawn wasn't so thrilled about the idea.

The brew process went fairly well with this one. Took a lot longer than the previous two due to the excessively long time it took me to boil the water. I ended up putting the pot on the stove straddling two burners and it still took 2 hours to boil. This was also my first experience with White Labs pitchable yeast. I had been having less than 24 hour lag times before fermentation began and this one took longer than 48 hours. I almost pitched some dry yeast in there to try and save it, but it turned out OK

I was also quite concerned after fermentation started and I ended up with a nasty looking greenish Krausen (foam) with slimy particles in it.

This did not really inspire confidence in the brew. Still, I decided there was little I could do except relax and let the yeast do it's thing.

The original gravity was 1.053, expected was 1.050. A little high, but close enough. I had good temperatures with this one. I used the old carboy in the bathtub trick and stayed a pretty steady 65°. I moved it over to secondary with a final (or near final) gravity of 1.018. A nice 4.6% ABV and should have a decent body to it. As usual, I drank the beer that I used to take the reading (hey, beer is beer!) and it has a nice solid flavor. Really looking forward to this one.

Since John wanted it...

Here is my brew blog. I'll post the progress of each of my brews here. I'll do a photo blog of my next brew session, so you can all follow along at home!