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.

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!

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.