Back on the Horse

For no reason other than the fact that there are not enough hours in any given day, it's been a long time since my last brew session. I rectified that situation this weekend by firing up the burner to make an IPA. I don't know if I've mentioned it before or not, but I use the "brew in a bag" method for my brewing, since it gives me the control of all-grain batches without having to purchase a whole lot of new equipment. It's a great method, the only limit I've found with it is with large grain bill batches, but it's easy to substitute a few pounds of dried extract in the place of base malt (which is what I did). So, to begin, I got the kettle up to 165 degrees, knowing that I'd lose about 12 degrees when I added the grain, and I wanted to mash between 152-154. After adding the grain, the wife and I headed off to JC Penny, Target, and Coney Island for dinner. That left me with a 2.5 hour mash when all was said and done. A little lot longer than I'd usually want, but I have read about people mashing for far longer, so I'm not concerned.

Upon return, it was fairly smooth sailing. Brought the mash up to boil, added my dry extract to boost the ABV a bit, and started hopping. This is a fairly standard take on an American IPA, so the hops aren't anything too surprising (Cascade and Centennial). The surprising part of it comes from the addition of lemon and orange zest toward the end of the boil. I was inspired by Shorts' The Liberator DIPA, which is one of my favorite DIPAs out there, and as you can see in the label picture to the right, they use those same fruit zests in the beer. I was going to go all in and try to make this a DIPA as well, but I decided to keep it simple and focus on flavor first. Bad things happen when I try too many new things at once, and I have two cases full of a Neapolitan Milk Stout that nobody will ever drink because of it. I did get to use my new, homemade wort chiller though! It was a bitch to make, because soft copper pipe is easy as shit to kink. It's not pretty, nor is it properly vertical, but it chilled the wort in about 10 minutes, so I don't have a whole lot of room to complain about it. You can see it in one of the pictures.

There's a few more pictures below, and here is a link to the recipe over on Hopville if you're interested. I'm going to be turning this one around quickly, so it should be bottled in a week and a half and ready to go shortly thereafter. I'm going to try reusing the yeast cake by brewing again this weekend and dumping a fresh batch of a cheap blonde ale on top of the yeast after I transfer this guy into secondary. A summer of homebrew shall be upon us!

Say Hello to the End of the World!

Since the world is supposed to end this year, I figure I might as well go out with a bang, so I'm proud to announce the Imperial Stout that wasn't supposed to be! It's got huge hop character like your favorite IPAs, but is roasty and smooth like your favorite stouts. It's smooth and warming, making it a great brew for chilly nights! Friends have said nothing but great things about this one, and I'm really proud of how it turned out. I think the reason this one did not go as far south as the last one did (come on over for a dark strawberry ale sometime) because I didn't venture too far out of my wheel house. This was supposed to be a black imperial IPA, but I got fairly ahead of myself while planning and didn't check to see how it would handle some of the malts. Mike says I need to use software when planning, and given my past two results, I think he may be on to something. This turned out to be a pleasant surprise when I poured my first bottle and instead of seeing a blackish IPA with an off-white head on it, I saw a viscous dark stout with a big, frothy, caramel colored head on it. My first tasting was a rather pleasant surprise. Definitely the best beer I've done so far. Thanks to Kyle for helping me bottle it.

A shot of the sample from bottling day. I couldn't taste the stoutness yet.

Happy Brew Year!

It has been a long while since I last brewed some beer. There's a couple of reasons for that. First off, I was slightly discouraged by the results of my last beer (the neapolitan milk stout), so I wanted to put a lot of thought into my next brew. Also, I wanted to see what Santa would bring me for brewing this Christmas. I was rather pleased with the results:

• Turkey fryer, which allows me to do full-boil batches, meaning I get the best utilization of the hops in my wort.
• Kitchen scale, which allows me to save money by buying hops and grains in bulk. I picked up a bunch of hops on sale from Farmhouse Brewing Supply, and with my Seal-A-Meal, I can reseal the hops that I don't use and freeze them for later!
• Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels, which I promptly opened and read the Pale Ales chapter.

I decided that my next brew would be another IPA. My last IPA was easily the best beer I've made, so I decided to move up from there. Taking into consideration what I learned from the book, and what I was able to gather from the internet, I put together a recipe for an imperial/double IPA that I felt would be a great brew, and put a twist on it to make it an American Black Ale.

So, this morning, after sleeping in and somehow waking up without a hangover from the New Year's Eve festivities, I set off to brew. I ran to 7-11 to pick up some ice (since I still don't have a wort chiller) and some provisions. I had purchased all the grains yesterday from Cap N' Cork, so I measured out my hops and malt extract (to supplement the grains, since I didn't want to have to do 20+ lbs of grain for this one) while the grains were steeping at 152 degrees. My target was 154, but I doubted the online calculator since I ended up overshooting it last time, but it turns out it would have been right.

I prepped the turkey fryer, which I put together last week, and got ready to take it for a spin. You can see in the pictures below how it looked before the boil got underway, and how it looked after. I pulled the grains from the kettle, drained them, and set off to start the boil. Part of the reason the kettle looks kinda rough is that I had a boil over immediately after putting the kettle onto the burner. I, in a rookie mistake, had the heat way too high, and it foamed too much. Once I played around with it, I was able to find a setting where I could maintain a rolling boil. I was cautious while adding my malt extract and hops, just because I feared another boil over. It got vigorous after the third hop addition, but nothing severe.

When the boil was done, it turns out I severely underestimated the amount I would lose during the boil, because I ended up with just under 4 gallons in the fermenting bucket. I tossed in a little water to bring it up to 5, but that dropped my gravity from what my estimate was. Again, another rookie mistake, but ideally I will have had a chance to build a proper mash tun for my next brew. We'll see how this one turns out in a month or so!

Man's best friend on a Sunday afternoon.

Grain drain.

Warrior, Chinook, Centennial.

The fryer, pre-boil.

The fryer, post-boilover.

brewlog: Strawberries!

This is what five pounds of strawberries looks like.

The Neapolitan Milk Stout has had about two weeks in primary, and stopped fermenting about a week into it, and I gave it an additional week to just sit with the chocolate and milk sugar in there to condition for a bit. The next step to take was to move it over to secondary to add the strawberries. I had purchased five pounds of pre-frozen strawberries from Meijer, and a couple days before I thawed them in the refrigerator for a day, and then re-froze them. According to various sources on the internet, this was the best way to break down the cellular structure of the fruit so that the beer could absorb the flavors.

This task was a bit more difficult than I had originally envisioned. I thought I could just make a funnel out of our cutting board sheet, and use that to funnel all of the strawberries into the carboy. It suffices to say that it was hardly that easy. I didn't realize how small the opening on a carboy actually is, so I had to shove them in there by hand. I didn't thaw them out fully because I didn't want to expose them to too many open air bacterium. I just ran them under hot water a little bit to thaw them out, so they were still fairly solid. This made it slightly difficult to get them in, but after about a half hour, I did it.

After that, I just racked the beer onto it as usual, and now it will sit there with the strawberries for another two weeks. There was a huge amount of yeast sludge on the bottom of this beer, and since I used chocolate and milk sugar, neither of which get processed by the yeast, I essentially had a thick chocolate pudding at the bottom of the fermenting bucket. Next, they'll get bottled with pure vanilla extract and brown sugar, and will further condition for another month or so before drinking. They're getting bottled in 22-24 oz. bottles, since I read that beer conditions better in larger volumes, so only a few 12oz bottles will be made to give to people. These probably won't be opened until late December or early January for optimal flavor.

Since I've tried so many new things with this beer, I'm really excited to see how it turns out. More updates will come as I progress.

This is how the finished product looks.

brewlog: Taking the Next Step!

Supplies for the Brew

Today I decided to take the next step in my brewing process and dive into all grain brewing. I had been keeping up with many great threads on reddit about all grain brewing (this one in particular) as well as doing a lot of reading on the HomebrewTalk forums (again, this one in particular), and decided I could take the plunge.

One thing the articles called for was an additional 6+ gallon pot, but I was able to pick up a 5 gallon pot from Meijer for only $4.25, so I made due with that. My work started in the kitchen, since my stove could handle the lower-temperature needs. I mashed the grains for an hour in the steel kettle at 154-ish degrees, and then heated the rest of the water in the other kettle, rinsed the grains, ran some water through the grains as they sat on the kettle (the canning pot came with a real great rack that held the grains up above the pot).

It was a real process, but at the end, there was some sweet, sweet wort. I then took it out to the garage and boiled and brewed as normal, adding lactose (milk sugar) and cocoa powder when I had 15 minutes remaining in the boil. While brewing, it smelled like the best chocolate milk ever, and even more so after adding the cocoa and sugar. I'll add the strawberries when it goes to secondary, and will add the vanilla at bottling. Not sure on what the post-boil OG is on this (hopville says 1.056, which is close to the 1.052 I got from the sample I scraped off at the hot break), since I broke another fucking hydrometer. We'll see how it all works out!

My brewing assistants were tired at the end of the process.

Presenting Brew #5 – Oktobersaurus Fest!

It's not a proper marzen-style Oktoberfest lager, but a German Ale. Since it wasn't a proper Oktoberfest, I figured I could get away with adding some additional hops, so I threw in an extra couple ounces of Hallertau towards the end, just so it's a tad nobler. It's clarity is much better than I expected, even in a warm bottle, so that's good. It was still not completely finished carbonating as of last weekend, so I hope it's ready to go by this weekend. Or by the end of October, for that matter. Either way, it should be a great fall beer. Come over and try it soon!

brewlog: Bottles of Grit

Something strange has occurred the past couple times I've prepped bottles for beer. Here's my process:

First, drink the beers in the bottles. This is the best part.

Next, I sort the bottles by label and bottle type. If a bottle has a plasticky label that I know will be a bitch to remove, or is a non-standard shape (Red Stripe, Founders, Sierra Nevada), I set it aside and return it properly. Anything else gets added to the pile of good, usable bottles.

When I've accumulated a significant amount of bottles (approximately 28, give or take a few depending on number of 22oz bottles), I put them into a couple of five gallon buckets I have, throw some Oxiclean in there, and fill them up with water.

Let them sit for a day or so, in the garage since it's warm out. Then spend some time outside with my dogs as I remove the labels and rinse the bottles.

OK, it all makes sense, right? However, this time, as well as the time before that, the bottles developed a gritty sort of film on them as they were sitting in the Oxiclean bath. The thing about this film is that it is tough to get off. I had to furiously scrub with a microfiber cloth to get rid of the grit on the outside, but then I got worried about grit existing on the inside. Last time there was no grit on the outside. So, this is where I got creative.

I didn't think to take a picture until I was halfway done.

I soaked the bottles in the hottest water my faucet could make in the utility sink. Then I took out my bottle scrubbing brush and went to town. This was a lot of work though, and my arm got tired. So, I MacGyvered myself a solution.

MacGyver would be proud

It cleaned all the bottles in a flash, and they are now grit free and spotless!

I am still puzzled as to what caused the problem in the first place. Looking at it scientifically, the only variable that changed was the temperature, so my theory is that Oxiclean at high heat bonds to glass that it comes in contact with for a long period of time. Maybe I need to scale back the amount of Oxiclean I use in higher heat. Or change nothing and get to play with a drill brush again. Probably that.

brewlog: Glass Shatters

I know this blog has been silent for a while, but I tend to only think to do this when I'm really excited for something or something has gone wrong. Unfortunately, we're looking at the latter here.

First and foremost, I shattered my carboy. Well, to be honest, gravity did the falling and the floor did the shattering, but I saw it unfolding before my very eyes.

Broken Carboy

I had just gone into the brewing supplies closet to put away my notebook, and did not close the door like I usually do. I don't know how setting a notebook on top of my kettle caused so much of a disturbance, but it caused enough to send the carboy falling. It landed mouth first and bounced, and in my head I said "Oh great, it bounced, it survived the fall!" but it landed on the rounded edge on the second hit, and went to pieces. Luckily, a lifetime of broken shit at the store trained me in how to pick up broken glass, so I emerged unscathed. I'll be buying a new carboy and a proper carboy stand once I get paid later this week.

b[rew]log: Batch #4, moving on up!

So, batch #4 made its way from bucket to carboy today. It fermented super vigorously in the bucket. the morning after I finished it, I checked it and the krausen had clawed its way into the airlock, so I had to grab an empty jug and create a blowoff tube for it.

Also, I had my first taste of batch #3 last night, and that one surprised me. In the end, it came out looking and tasting very much like a golden ale, but with noticeable "wheatiness" to it. I can't really describe it well, so you should come by and have one if you're interested!

Batch #4 is an IPA, and it definitely smells like it. The 6.5 ounces of hops probably have something to do with that. I am going to swing by Brewing World today to pick up some hops for dry hopping, and let that sit for another week before they make their way into the bottles. I'm super excited about this one, I think it could be my best yet.