Friday, May 25, 2007
Holy Crap! That's good!
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).
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Imperial Stout
- 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
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.
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:
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!
Monday, May 21, 2007
I'm glad I rememberd the boy scout motto! (Always Be Prepared)
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!
Friday, May 18, 2007
Cream Ale
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.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Oops
I'll try to remember for this weekend's project. It should be a good one, a nice big Imperial Stout.
Friday, May 11, 2007
My first brew and the importance of temperature control
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.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Racking to the Secondary
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.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
52 Bottles of Beer on the Wall...
Cooler Conversion
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.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Bubbling Away Merrily...
Looks pretty, doesn't it!