Batch or Fly?

A few nights back I had a great conversation with Ted to catch up on brewing. Ted was marveling at the massive new mashtun we were using and he had some practical questions about it. The one that stuck out to me was:

"Do you have something against batch sparging?"

While I have saught for the fly sparge that actually works, I have never stopped and asked myself if it's really worth all the effort. Perhaps I am totally focused on doing it just so I can say that I do it. Maybe it's the trickling water and the crazy hoisting of scaulding hot water that attracts me to the fly sparge like a moth to a flame, who knows.

All I know that it's time for me to take a step back and review the benefits and drawbacks of fly versus batch sparging. There is a great artile in BYO about this, but I would like to hear what you have to say, please make a vote on the survay (right side) and leave a comment. I'll do a follow up to sum up the stances.

Cheers!

Extra Mash Tun

After brewing outside the capacity of our current mash tun, Nick and I have been looking for a way to build out. After surfing around for a 100+qt cooler, I was looking Craig's List and saw a five gallon water jug for $10. I couldn't resist.

I picked up this hoss with the intention of having it be the reservoir for our sparge, but last weekend, Nick mentioned that with a little work, we could make this guy duel porpoise - mash tun and sparge reserve.

First off, we had to remove the water spout that was on it already. For this model (and most others to my knowledge) it's just a matter of unscrewing the plastic nut on the back and it's off. Easy stuff.

After getting that off, I had widen the hole a little bit to fit the 3/4" ball valve (with threads)through. Don't go too big though, as you want to have as tight a fit as possible. With two gaskets and some silicone, I was able to seal things up (this is a process, but it's worth continuing to do until you get it right). I have a gasket on the outside and one on the inside. On the inside is a plastic nut from my bottling bucket - works great!

This false bottom was Nick's idea. It's a 1/2" piece of copper tube that has slits sawed into it with a small piece of stainless steal (feed grade from a cheap strainer) on the end. The copper tube is connected to a 1/2" spur via a piece of rubber tube (it was a lot of work to get it over that). All parts are held in place by screw clamps.



This false bottom (1/2" spur and nut) connects to the ball valve (3/4") through a brass 3/4" to 1/2" connection.



So in the end, we have a false bottom for a mash tun using odds and ends pieces I have lying all over. Having a keg system helps me to have a lot of odds and end parts so we were able to make something pretty basic for about $15.

To everyone out there worried about the expenses involved in going all-grain (Adam I am looking in your direction!), here is a way that is cheap - so much so that it will pay for itself in the first batch you do.

Cheers!

Reiterated Mashing

So in December of this past year when my BYO came, I saw an article by Chris Colby about this new technique for brewing high gravity beers. While I was not able to find an online version of the article, you can order it from BYO here or you can hear a really informative interview with James from Basic Brewing Radio here (November 22, 2007) on it.

Reading the article really gave me a lot to think about. Three things come to mind:

1) Is this worth all the work?
2) what's the benefit?
3) If this is some magic way to maximize your grain bill, why not do it all the time?

Well after listening to James' interview and reading a bunch of forum threads on it (here, here and here), I came up with some answers to these questions:

1) Making a big beer is always one of several things, work, time or money.
2) The benefit is being able to make a big beer with a normal mash tun and with out having to boil down 20 gallons of wort
3) No magic, just a way to deal with a 40lb grain bill on a 12 gallon mash tun and a 15gal brew kettle

So after some reading and a meeting with Nick, we decided to take the plunge and we are going to brew a Kaffir Lime Imperial Lager. Here is the recipe:


Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 11.70 gal
Estimated OG: 1.080 SG
Estimated Color: 3.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 15.7 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.0 %
Boil Time: 45 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
30.00 lb Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM) Grain 75.0 %
8.00 lb Rice, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 20.0 %
2.00 lb Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
3.00 oz Saaz [4.00%] (45 min) Hops 15.7 IBU
Munich Lager #2308 (reused from Samuel Jackson)

Now there are a few things going on here that I need to explain. First off the rice. While flaked rice (rice that is pregelatinized) is the recommended method of using rice as an adjunct, we are going to be using plain white rice because of the lack of availability of flaked rice. So there will be a 1/2 hr rice prep that will either take place the night before or the day of brewing.

With that said, we are going to make our variation on a "reiterated mash":

Reiterated Mashing (our take)

1. 20lbs added to mash tun
2. Strike 10 gal of water at 162 for a grain bed temp of 150
3. Let sit for 20 min
4. Heat up additional 5 gallons water to sparge first 20lbs of grain
5. Runoff into brew kettle - Heat wort up (if necessary)
6. Strike wort from kettle to second 20lbs of grain (in second cooler)with 140-145f grain bed target temp - Rest for 1hr stiring every 10min
7. (in the meantime) Batch sparge 5 gallons of sparge water that was heated up, runoff into second brew pot - Heat up to 140f and hold
8. Empty first 20lbs of grain from mash tun
9. After the hour is up, dump the second 20lbs of grain from second cooler into mash tun along with 2.5 gal of water at 192f for mash out temp - let stand for 10 min.
10. Runoff into brew kettle
11. Use the 5 gallons that was sparged from the first 20lbs to fly sparge the second 20lbs in the mash tun
12. Brew!

From all the reading and listening I did, this process should be about 3hrs on it's own. There are some basic "all grain brewing" aspects of this that are assumed such as recirculation. With that said, there will be minimal to no recirculation before the last runoff because the wort is going into more grain.

After the wort is in the kettle (we are shooting for 11.7gal preboil volume) we will commence with a normal brew day only with a 45min boil to ensure the lightness of the brew.

The kaffir lime is going to be introduced in the secondary. The preparation is for the leaves only. Nick is in charge of this and he is freezing the leaves (20 for a 10.5 gallon batch) and then chopping them up and boiling them. This will make a kaffir lime leaf concentrate and that is what we will introduce to the secondary. It's a pretty interesting idea.

So that's the plan. We are open to feed back as it sounds like there have not been a lot of people out there that have used this approach. I hope that I was able to articulate the technique in a way that makes sense (to those of us above the Mason Dixon line anyway, MNB I am mostly concerned for you as this is pretty confusing).

Cheers!

PS - I am going to take plenty of pictures and try to make a really comprehensive overview of how we are doing this.

Samuel L. Jackson Beer

Sunday was back to brewing for Nick and I in the face of REALLY cold conditions. A few weeks back I did a post about our attempt at making a Samuel Adams Lager clone but due to some unforeseen circumstances, that brew went on hold and I brewed my Tripel Nipple. Well this past Sunday we got back on track.

This brew came out really well and due to an increased efficiency (and the resulting increase in potency of this brew) we decided to change the name to Samuel L. Jackson Beer because this stuff will get ya drunk! I also made some adjustments to the recipe, this is what we ended up brewing:

Samuel L. Jackson Beer

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
21.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 82.5 %
2.32 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 8.9 %
2.25 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 8.6 %
3.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (60 min) Hops 24.3 IBU
1.25 oz Tettnang [4.50%] (30 min) Hops 7.3 IBU
1.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (Dry Hop 4 days) Hops -
0.53 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs Munich Lager (Wyeast Labs #2308) Yeast-Lager

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 26.07 lb
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temp Step Time
Mash In Add 8.08 gal of water at 162.6 F151.0 F 75 min
Mash Out Add 5.21 gal of water at 198.2 F168.0 F 10 min

Brew Notes

Despite some snow up Nick's way, we were still able to get started with a striking at 7:30am. We struck with about 155f as the temp. I was going for 151f to give this a little lighter body, but not a bog deal. Because this was a big recipe and we were working at the capacity of the mash tun, we ran off three gallons of the wort into a pot so that we could add it to the sparge water (this was Nick's idea and may have contributed to the name of the brew).

We hit our mash out temp of 168f on the nose and let it sit for 10 min. After this we added the sparge water and let the sparge happen for about 30 to 45 min. In the end our pre-boil gravity was 14.75brix or 1.058 gravity, a little more than a point above the projected 1.047.

Our yield was about 1/2 gallon lower than it should have been when things were all said and done and our gravity was 1.060, four above where we were aiming giving us the new name - Samuel Jackson Lager - due to the increase in potency.

In the end our efficiency was about 70% and we need to figure out if it was the recirculation of the wort or hitting the mash out temp that caused the spike.

In other news

I had a little stall in the fermentation of my Tripel Nipple that was solved by taking the bucket upstairs into the bathroom where it could sit at 72f. I have since racked it over and have the 5 gallon carboy on my bench where it's a consistent 68f. Contrary to rumors on the Internets, I don't think that a Tripel is equal portions Bud Lite, Miller Lite and Coors.

On that note, Southern Culture on the Skidz has decided to take some pot shots at my over carbonated (and very over oaked) stout. I didn't get a chance to respond because I was watching the NEW YORK Giants make it to the Super Bowl and I was basking in the light of an all north eastern Super Bowl. While I do sometimes have hiccups in my brewing operation, at least what I do to my beer is legal in all 50 states, unlike the boys at MNB:

Change of plans

Well doe to an unfortunate situation, Nick was not available this weekend to brew. With that said, I still need to get 'my brew on' so I am going to do a solo batch for my brain.

For this brew I am going to do a Belgium Tripel I am calling Tripel Nipple. When I went to get my supplies for the brew day at my LHBS, a kid Ed has working there mistakenly started to ground 2-row pale malt for me instead of pilsener. Ed offered to give me to two row for free and start it all over again, but I told him it was all good and made this with 9.8lbs european 2 row and 5.2lbs pilsener. No need to waste. I am not sure if that takes in out of the "Tripel" category or not though. Oh well, not like I care...

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 6.50 gal
Boil Size: 8.98 gal
Estimated OG: 1.070 SG
Estimated Color: 7.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 28.2 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 61.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
9.80 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 48.40 %
5.20 lb Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM) Grain 25.68 %
2.00 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 9.88 %
2.00 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 9.88 %
0.25 lb Caravienne Malt (22.0 SRM) Grain 1.23 %
1.00 oz Cluster [8.50 %] (60 min) Hops 20.9 IBU
1.00 oz Mt. Hood [6.00 %] (15 min) Hops 7.3 IBU
1.00 lb Candi Sugar, Clear (0.5 SRM) Sugar 4.94 %
5.50 gal Syracuse, New York Water
1 Pkgs Trappist High Gravity (Wyeast Labs #3787) Yeast-Wheat


Mash Schedule: Double Infusion, Full Body
Total Grain Weight: 19.25 lb
----------------------------
Double Infusion, Full Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
30 min Protein Rest Add 4.33 gal of water at 134.5 F 122.0 F
30 min Saccrification Add 3.85 gal of water at 206.7 F 158.0 F
10 min Mash Out Add 2.89 gal of water at 199.4 F 168.0 F

I got started this morning at about 6:30am (thanks Meatball for making sure I was up early on a Saturday) and finished at 11:30am. Pretty smooth brew day for the most part. I hit all of my temps and made some pH adjustments to the mash to get a 5.5pH. Everything went VERY smoothly up until the end.

I discovered that Beer Smith was giving me about 4 gallons more than I needed for the volume I was looking for. I am not exactally sure how it happened, but I can only assume that the quart of water to pound of grain volume is set too high. I am trying to figure out how to fix this for the future.

All was not lost though. I wound up with an extra gallon of brew and it still came in at a hefty 1.070 OG. I can live with that. I was dead on balls accurate with everything else so I am pleased with the day as a whole. Plus at a sunny 40f it was like brewing in Georgia only without being married to my cousin.

In other news...

First off, Ted from Ted's Homebrew Journal and I exchanged some brews over the holidays. Last night I tasted his Simcoe 100 and here are my notes:

Aroma - It's like opening a bag of hops and taking a whiff. There is a little malt tucked away in the background, but the hops are really the star of the show and you can get a complete hops aroma on this.

Appearance - Dark copper with a light brown finish. Depending on what light you hold it in, it can be very dark. The head was a cream color reminiscent of French vanilla. The head build up quickly and stuck around for a long time.

Flavor - Leads in with a hint of bitterness before you are hit with a strong grapefruit flavor. Its not an overly tart grapefruit, but just the citrus tang. Just like the nose, the hops is all over this one. It's a very complete hops flavor and the grapefruit plays very nicely with it.

Overall - My comments verbatim; "Wow - I love this beer!" It's a hell of a brew. My only regret is that I had but one to drink...

Second I racked over my Hairy Porter, very smooth and very sweet. It's actually a lot less harsh than I anticipated. I let it sit in secondary in the fridge for three weeks so its nicely mellowed. It was time well spent. The Anise has an interesting blend in this brew. More to come on this.

Finally it seems as though my "bottling for champs" el cheepo method might not be working. I need to do one of two things; break down and get a beer gun or prime every keg and bottle off of that. We will see...

Back to the brewing

It's not been an easy past week. I am ready to do some brewing to take my mind off of everything.

This weekend we will be brewing a Hopped Bohemian Lager in the spirit of Boston Brewing Company's Samuel Adams Lager. If you don't know about this brew, I tell ya what. If you don't know about Sam Adams, just raise your hand and I'll have Tommy Boy here come back there and hit you in the head with a tack hammer because you're a RETARD.

I am calling this "Bogan's Bohemian Lager" after my professional mentor and close friend Ed Bogan. Ed's wisdom is the reason I am where I am today and I cannot thank him enough. I am going to miss you Ed.

The brew is going to be lagered at 48-50f (depending on how the weather cooperates) and should finish at about 4.5% ABV. Some of the recipes I saw used a decoction so we are going to be decocting this one. I think that it brings a lot of nice flavors and smells out of the malt so I am going to be pushing for us to do that.

Bogan's Bohemian Lager
Brewer: Travis & Nick
Asst Brewer: Meatball
Style: Hopped Bohemian Lager
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 13.12 gal
Estimated OG: 1.046 SG
Estimated Color: 13.2 SRM
Estimated IBU: 34.5 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount
16.75 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 74.2 %
5.32 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 23.6 %
0.50 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 2.2 %
3.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (60 min) Hops 26.6 IBU
1.25 oz Tettnang [4.50%] (30 min) Hops 8.0 IBU
1.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (Dry Hop 4 days) Hops -
1 Pkgs Munich Lager (Wyeast Labs #2308) Yeast-Lager

Mash Schedule: Decoction Mash, Single
Total Grain Weight: 22.57 lb
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temp Step Time
Protein Rest Add 11.29 gal of water at 126.6 122.0 F 35 min
Saccharification Decoct 4.78 gal of mash and boil155.0 F 45 min
Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min 168.0 F 10 min


Initially the plan was to take advantage of the cold weather for lagerning, but since it's been a heat wave here in Syracuse, I am not sure that's going to workout for us. Hopefully things cool down this weekend and we can shut that damn Al Gore up.

Happenings on the Internets

Freak Brothers were nice enough to include me in on a beer exchange that they are proposing through out the beer blogs. The bros have one of the best homebrew setups I have ever seen.

Last weekend Alan from A Good Beer Blog published my post about Ubu Ale on his blog. I am going to be contributing to that blog in the future, up next will be an interview with Tim from Empire Brewing Company and hopefully Kiernan from Landmark Brewing Company.

Finally, congratulations to the fellas from Monday Night Brewery, they have found the bond that connects them is more than beer, it's a game called "Cornhole". God only knows what those guys are up to with their "cornholes".

Schedule for early '08

No brewing for the last two weekends and I am again not going to be brewing this coming weekend as I will be in New Hampshire campaigning for...well a presidential candidate (If you know me, you know who it is, otherwise I want to follow the rules of "no talking religion or politics on your brew blog"...well except when it's complaining about piss poor legislation as they had to do on MNB, that's always fair game).

That being the case, Nick, Meatball and I will be brewing the two weekends after. We are going to do some lagers so that we can take advantage of the weather. I was thinking about either a German Pils or a Maibock for 10 gallon batches on one weekend. We might do another IPA by request on that weekend as well, we will see. The weekend after we are going to plan a long brew day so that we can try the recirculation that was reading about in last month's BYO. The long and short of the technique is that you mash in two stages for 20 min each running all the water off. Now this should provide a very strong lager and we might be able to user the second runnings for another 10 gallon batch. This one is going to take some planning though.

That's what's on the agenda for now. Cheers!

Rain or snow, we brew

In the face of blistering winds, lake effect snow, sleet, and full on up-state winter, we manned up and brewed.

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BINGHAMTON NY

333 PM EST SUN DEC 16 2007

STEADY SNOW WILL TRANSITION TO BANDS OF LAKE EFFECT SNOW TONIGHT...WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGH MONDAY. ADDITIONAL SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONSOF 3 TO 6 INCHES ARE EXPECTED OVER THE AREA TONIGHT...WITH 1 TO 3MORE INCHES IN THE HEAVIER LAKE SNOW BANDS...

WINDS WILL SHIFT TO THE NORTHWEST THIS EVENING...AND INCREASE TO15 TO 30 MPH WITH OCCASIONAL GUSTS 40 TO 50 MPH.

But up here, this is man brewing country, not like the fellas at Monday Night Brewery. Down there the only concern is which Kenny Chesney tape to listen to while they wash down their grits with PBR.

Langunitas IPA Clone

Today we started at 7am and finished at 1:45pm with 16 gallons of brew pitched. We started off with the Lagunitas IPA Clone which went off with out a problem. We struck at about 8:05am with this at 157f. This temp held and we were able to mash out and sparge without a problem. Our pre-boil OG was 1.045 which was right on target.



This brew called for a 90 min boil so it took a little longer than some of of the other brews we have done. It was also a pretty full brew kettle and we had a boil over early on. When it was all said and done though, we were a little low on our expected OG (1.059) and measured out about 1.056. Not a big deal, but there are always places to improve.

Hairy Porter

Yea I know, it was Porterhouse before, but this was Nick's idea for a name and I like it. We also made some changes to the recipe for this one. The biggest change was the use of the kolsch yeast we have from the kolsch and the cream ale we recently brewed. This was after the realization that an Alt and a Porter have a very similar malt bill and we figured the kolsch yeast might make this a more smooth drinking dark beer. We will see.

The other big ingredient in this brew was the star anise (pronounced anus) which we steeped in during the boil for about 25min. We used 25 anis stars with the hope of giving this a really unique flavor that wouldn't fit into a specific category, but we would like.




During the process of brewing the porter, we realized that we didn't have something to steep the hops in so Nick used some screen and his Potsdam education to good use in engineering this masterful creation:




In the end we were able to hit all of our targets with the Hairy Porter and we were both very pleased with the level of anise flavor that the brew had. It should be a very interesting beer in the end.

Two Brew Weekend

One of the many advantages of living in a multi seasonal state like the Empire State is snow. What a great way to use nature to cool down your brews for you!



In the end, the schedule was everything with the two brew day. We started to heat up the water for the porter as soon as we struck for the IPA. This was a start to the process that in the end, worked out really well and allowed us to do two brews with a single mash tun.

Another big brew weekend

After the fiasco that was our first attempt at brewing two beers in a single brew session, we decided to go at it more more time. This time we are taking on a Lagunitas IPA clone and a robust porter I am calling Porterhouse.

Now for those of you that don't know, those of us who live north of the Mason-Dixon Line and don't have to plan our brew days around the Sunday NASCAR race like Jonathan (pictured below) and his buddies at Monday Night Brewery, we like to brew on weekends.

This weekend we will be taking on a 10 gallon Lagunitas IPA clone:

Recipe: Lagunitas IPA Clone
Brewer: Travis and Nick
Asst Brewer: Meatball
Style: American IPA
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.00 gal
Boil Size: 13.20 gal
Estimated OG: 1.059 SG
Estimated Color: 7.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 66.2 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.0 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
23.25 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 85.2 %
1.55 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 5.7 %
1.35 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L (30.0 SRM) Grain 4.9 %
1.15 lb Munich Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 4.2 %
2.00 oz Horizon [12.00%] (60 min) Hops 43.3 IBU
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50%] (30 min) Hops 15.3 IBU
1.00 oz Williamette [5.50%] (30 min) Hops 7.6 IBU
5.00 oz Cascade [5.50%] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep) Hops -
0.50 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body
Total Grain Weight: 27.30 lb
----------------------------
Name Description
Mash In Add 8.53 gal of water at 170.5 F158.0 F 45 min
Mash Out Add 3.41 gal of water at 196.6 F168.0 F 10 min
----------------------------
We will also be doing a 6 gallon batch of porter:

Recipe: Porterhouse
Brewer: Nick and Travis
Asst Brewer: Meatball
Style: Robust Porter
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (40.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 6.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.80 gal
Estimated OG: 1.053 SG
Estimated Color: 48.0 SRM
Estimated IBU: 35.8 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
10.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel (3.2 SRM) Grain 70.0 %
1.75 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 11.7 %
1.25 lb Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 8.3 %
0.75 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
0.75 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
2.00 oz Fuggles [4.50%] (60 min) Hops 26.7 IBU
1.00 oz Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [4.00%] (30 min) Hops 9.1 IBU
0.25 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1.00 oz Anise, Star (Boil 20.0 min) Misc
10.00 gm Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs London Ale (Wyeast Labs #1028) Yeast-Ale


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body
Total Grain Weight: 15.00 lb
----------------------------
Name Description
Mash In Add 4.69 gal of water at 174.5 F 158.0 F 45 min
Mash Out Add 1.88 gal of water at 196.6 F 168.0 F 10 min
----------------------------

This is going to be a pretty busy brew day, but should be a lot of fun. The Lagunitas IPA should be a nice and hoppy beer. It uses a pretty crazy amount of hops. With the porter we are going to use the anise sparingly until we get a feel for how strong it will work with the recipe. I learned my lesson with the oak chips on that one.

Cheers!

Bottled the Stout

A few days before I made all the changes and moved the kolsch and cream ale around, I bottled my Great Divide Yeti Imperial Stout cone. If you remember right, I noted that I was WAY over on the oak chips and it was a little like drinking bark.

To help deal with this, I added some water, about 2qts or so, and let it hang out in secondary for a while.

I had another taste since doing this and I have to say it made a big difference. The oak flavor is still there and pretty strong, but nothing like it was before. I am going to let them mellow out in the bottle for a while. As you can see from the pictures, the watering down did not impact the SRM in anyway.



With this bottling I tried a trick Nick was telling me about for long-term storage. You wrap the threads of the growler with Teflon tape and then screw your top on. With these I am going to be bottle conditioning so I have to be sure not to over tighten the caps because the plastic caps (with the plastic diaphragm in them) will break if you try to over tighten them too much. With the Teflon tape it allows you to tighten them snug, without feeling like you have left them loose.



This weekend we are brewing an IPA and a flavored porter. For the flavors we are looking at anise to do something like the pugnacious porter I did a while back, or perhaps some maple sugar to try something different. Any input would be appreciated!

Cheers

My Kolsch yeast scares me

So last night I was racking over my Kolsch from the secondary into a keg and I was harvesting the traub to use for an alt in the future. It was just then it happened, I turned my head and my yeast bit me! The goddamn stuff jumped out of the bottle and bit my finger!

I immediately proceeded to shake the beast free from my finger and it took off towards the sum pump. This yeast knew it was strong enough to brave the cold upstate winter and it wanted the freedom of the outdoors. Fearing for my own life and the life of my assistant brewer Meatball, I went after the beast. It was an ugly scene, traub, hops and blood were everywhere, but at the end of the day, I had bagged me a ferocious yeast stain.

Seriously though, that kolsch yeast is a REALLY aggressive yeast. It's pretty unexpected because it's associated with lighter beers, but it flocculates right through the wort like it's nobodies business.

Last night I did some racking. When I went to rack my kolsch over to a keg from a secondary that has been in the fridge for the last 8 days, the yeast was STILL bubbling in the bottle I used for yeast storage.



As you can see from the pictures above, the one on the lest is the kolsch as I am racking it over last night. The one on the right is the cream ale that used the same yeast and is in the fridge now. If you notice the bubbler with the red cap on the left, that's the one where the yeast from the kolsch is and it's already bubbled over since last night!

Anyway, just a word of warning on this dangerous beast, err I mean yeast.

On the kolsch itself it's a very light beer. I actually topped it off with water after the primary which may have lightened it more, but it tastes fine. It's going to need a little time though. There is a definite lager taste to the kolsch yeast which makes it really intriguing. I did some reading last night in Ray Daniels book, Designing Great Beers, and he traces the origin of the kolsch to a time when Germany went crazy for lagers and ales needed to take the edge off in order to preserve the classic ale styles of old. Interesting stuff and a GREAT book if you want to tell your kids or wife something to get you, this is a great choice.

When I kegged the kolsh, I racked over the cream ale into the secondary.

It was pretty light as well. It has a really nice flavor to it, I think I might bring this to x-mas with my in-laws because it's a great gateway beer for people who are into American Pilsners.



In the end, the whole experience was nothing a few band-aids and a beer couldn't fix.

Cheers!

Cold but fun brew day

We just finished up a great brew day! By the time things were all said and done, we had 11 gallons of cream ale with an OG of 1.044 making our efficiency 71%!

Now I know that people always say "don't worry about how high your efficiency is as long as you are making good beer, that's all that matters", but as much as I whole heartily agree, in a way it's like Ron Jeremy telling you size doesn't matter. You know it really doesn't matter, but you still want wanting more. But I digress.

Today we fired up our water in a blustery upstate NY day at 7am and were done (pitched, cleaned up and ready to be done) by 12:45pm making this a really enjoyable brew day. This was my first time using my mash tun and sparge arm that I worked on last weekend. Things went really well with both additions. Pictured below on the left you can see that we have the sparge arm up on the top running into the mash tun, the mash tun was running off into the brew kettle and we were running that into a bucket for recirculation.



Our pre-boil gravity was right on with the Beer Smith recommendations at 1.032. We were able to get up to a rolling boil and hold it there without boil over for the full hour. The recipe for the cream ale only called for a 1.5 oz bittering hops and a .5 oz flavor hops making it a very light on hops flavor.



Nick made a .5 gallon starter so we were able to pitch a quart each for our buckets. When we ran the brew off we were at 5.5gallons each and dumped the last quart out.



As I said before, our FG was at 1.044 when our target was 1.040 and we had an extra gallon!



In the end it was nice to have an easy brew day. All the equipment finally works the way I want it to, our efficiency improved, and the whole process has become much less complicated. Things that didn't go the way we wanted were that we did not make mash out temp and we were a little low in the mash at only 154. All things I can live with.

Cheers!

You don't wanna why it's 'Cream Ale'

Since we have been brewing a lot of really big and complex beers the last few times out, we decided to lighten things up a little and go for a Cream Ale. If you have been reading for a few months you'll remember that I did a vanilla cream ale (no link because I think I did not blog about this one...interesting, I am brewing so much I forget beers)this summer and was really pleased with the outcome. This time we are going for a more simple brew and we are going to cold store it for a few weeks secondary.

The recipe is pretty straight forward:

You don't wanna why it's 'Cream Ale'
Brewer: Travis&Nick
Asst Brewer: Meatball
Style: Cream Ale
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.00 gal
Boil Size: 12.55 gal
Estimated OG: 1.040 SG
Estimated Color: 4.1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 15.3 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 59.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item
14.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 74.7 %
3.00 lb Corn, Flaked (1.3 SRM) 16.0 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) 5.3 %
0.75 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) 4.0 %
1.50 oz Saaz [4.00%] (60 min) 12.2 IBU
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00%] (30 min) 3.1 IBU
1 Pkgs Kolsch Yeast (Wyeast Labs #2565) (Yeast Cake from Kolsch)

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body
Total Grain Weight: 18.75 lb
----------------------------
Name Description
Mash In Add 5.86 gal of water at 170.5 F158.0 F 45 min
Mash Out Add 2.34 gal of water at 196.6 F168.0 F 10 min

The plan is to fly sparge on this one, flying in the face of the advice from Ted :-) Honestly I have a hard on for fly sparging because I have never done it, I need to get over that hump before I can move on and make an educated decision about which I prefer. (Are the perverse overtones of this post too blatant?)

More info after the weekend brew session...cheers!

PS- Check out my buddy Ben's revamped website. Great upgrade. Ben was the inspiration for my "tap and box" project that is holding my beer at a comfortable 49f! Thanks Ben.

The second beer fridge project

After the success (eventually) of the beer fridge I made with a dorm fridge and a cold plate, Nick decided he was ready to make the plunge into kegging and wanted one himself.

For this project, Nick had a bigger dorm fridge than I had previously used. The fridge that he used looked like a 4.6 cu. ft. fridge where mine was a 1.7 cu. ft. fridge. This will allow him to also store beer, yeast and any other items in it he wants to keep cold in addition to the cold plate.



The setup was very similar to what I had setup before the box and tap which is what I am currently using. The plan was simple; hole in the front of the fridge for 1/2in spur and tap, hose to cold plate, house out of cold plate, house out of fridge to keg, hose from keg to CO2. Pretty simple.

We started with the small hole from the keg into the fridge.



Sorry about the crappy photo. The hole was in the lower part of the fridge near where the motor is. This is a pretty convenient place to drill as long as you are careful. However, it doesn't really matter where you drill with this size fridge because the colling element is the freezer, no freon in the walls like a large fridge.

From here we hooked up the CO2 and ran the line through to the cold plate.



He got the tubes, gages and CO2 tank from EJ Wren. Finally we drilled the hole through the front of the fridge using my handy dandy step drill bit. After we screwed in the tap and ran the hose, we were all done. Easy enough.

Nick said that the system has been working perfectly. He lucked out and was able to tweak the CO2 pressure so that there were no aggressive foam issues.

Again, sorry about the bad pics, next time I will get a real camera, not my camera phone.

Cheers!

Tweaking my bru wear

So the title is in reference to the Wu Tang Clan and the Wu Wear they made famous. Though I am am not a crazy Wu fan, I do appreciate their shaolin style, but I digress.

This weekend I spent doing some "fixer uppers" on my brew house. While all this was going on, I kicked the Pumpkin Ale and the Brown Ale. Both will be missed, but the dobblebock is now on tap and that is worth writing about. This post is going to be a mishmash of my projects and drinking so away we go.

Mash Tun

First off, after all of the problems I had with the mash tun, I knew it was time for some adjustments. The way that the false bottom had previously worked was a barbed nut going to a very short piece of rubber hose, from there a small piece of copper slid into a hole in the 1/2in copper tubing that made up the false bottom.

The plan to improve this was to was to create a more permanent connection from the false bottom to the ball lock valve. I started by moving the location of where the liquid exits the false bottom.

As pictured, I relocated the exit point of the runoff from the front of the false bottom to the center. This was to allow me to runner full copper with soldering from the false bottom to the ball valve.

From here, I created a connection from the ball valve to the newly relocated false bottom exit point. For this, I used a 1/2in copper fitting nut and a piece of 1/2in copper pipe. I connected the copper tube to a copper corner piece with solder to create a permanent connection. I did not solder the connection from the corner piece to the false bottom because I wanted to maintain some wiggle room.

In the end, I had a new connection between the ball lock and the false bottom that could still be taken out of the mash tun and properly cleaned.

Sparge Arm...One more time

So after my many, many failed attempts at building a sparge arm that would work, I think I have have something now. In the process of creating a successful sparge arm, I still managed to fail at an attempt to save the previous copper sparge arm that did not work because of the hose. In the long term though, i established that a hanging sparge arm would not work because we are now brewing 10 gallon batches and there is not as much room in the mash tun there once was.

As you can see in the picture below, I attempted to make the copper sparge arm a floating sparge arm instead of the hanging sparge arm it currently is. This was a failed attempt. The foam that I used to make it float was glued on, but the glue did not hold and got all over the copper. There was not saving it.




Starting with a clear slate, I decided to use my bottling bucket for the reservoir, high temp hose to run the water from the reservoir to the sparge arm, and PVC pipe for the actual sparge arm. With the bottling bucket, I had to get a 3/4 ball valve and i used the plastic nut from the bottling setup to secure the ball valve into the bucket. I used 5/8 in inside diameter hot water hose that is rated at boiling temp for the hose. I used barbed nuts for the connection to the ball valve and the connection from the new PVC sparge arm.



Finally I made the sparge arm out of PVC with small holes in it. It's pretty simple, a square with holes in it that goes to a T. PVC is cheaper and easier to work with than copper, I wish I had done this originally. It doesn't float above the water, but it should sit on top of the gain bed without sinking and slowly disburse water. The ball valve is clutch here because you can adjust the flow with relative ease.

In the end, this is what I have:



Beer

So now a quick update on my brewing situation. I have a Kolsch and the Yeti clone both in secondary. The Yeti was way too much on the oak side, this concurs with Nick's opinion that splitting the full pound for the 6 gallon batch was overkill. I would have to say that his opinion that we would be good with an ounce in each primary fermenter was correct.

Because of the overwhelming flavor on the yeti and the fact that I lost some quantity, I decided to top the yeti off in the secondary with about two quarts to a 1/2 gallon of water. Hopefully this take some of the extreme flavor off this brew. Otherwise it is close to undrinkable.

The kolsh is good, but cloudy. There was a lot of stuff still floating around. I topped this one off with water in the secondary as well. Currently it's still bubbling in the carboy so I think that I may need to cold store this one for a while to clear it out.



Finally I have my dopplebock on tap now and my red ale still waiting to fully carbonate. The dopplebock is OUTSTANDING. It's totally smooth. All of the roasty malt flavors are really smoothed over during the lagering process. This makes the whole experience really enjoyable. there is no alcohol burn on this brew at all and it about 7% abv, that's pretty impressive.

As you can see, great color, great head retention. I am very happy with how this turned out. It makes the wait all very worth while.

Since I kicked the pumpkin and the brown ale, I think it's time for a brew day!

Cheers

Beer Geeks Anonymous

[CNYBrew] Hi, my name is Travis and I am a beer geek

[Beer Blogosphere]Hi Travis

OK, so the first step is admitting so here I am, giving myself up.

So a while back I decided I wanted to start treating my mash for pH and taking measurements. I started to, but felt like I was not really doing anything and have since fallen off the wagon.

Now despite an outstanding explanation by Ted on pH and mash, it didn't get through my thick skull so I bailed. Today though, I woke up on a mission. I wanted to understand how and why I wanted to treat my water.

So I took a look at Ted's entry one more time, I listened to a podcast James with an interview by John Palmer on pH which he also covers in greater detail in the links I have associated with his name. I also looked back at an email I exchanged with James from Basic Brewing Radio. After all of that beer geekeyness, this is where I am:

First off, a brief overview of what is going on and why it's good to treat your mash; different regions have different water chemistry. John Palmer uses the Pilsen and Dublin regions as examples of two different water profiles. In Dublin, where stout is king, they have a highly alkaline water source.

A stout uses a lot of very dark grains that are acidic and help to counterbalance the natural alkaline water. Why are dark grains acidic? Who knows, they just are. With that said, every grain has a relative acidity or alkaline value that will contribute to the pH of the mash so a recipe combined with your water's profile will create the pH of the mash.

According to Palmer, you want to be at 5.4 to 5.8 mash pH at room temp, 5.1-5.5 mash pH at mash temp in order for optimum beta amylase conversion into fermentable sugars, thus your efficiency suffers. If the pH falls a half pH value, 5.4 at room temp to 4.9, beta amylase activity, conversion will suffer.

Brewing a stout, in water that is acidic, with the dark malts that are very acidic, it will effect your efficiency. The sugars in the wort will not be as fermentable because the pH was not in the correct range for beta amylase conversion. Also, in some cases the stout will take on a very acrid taste.

With all of that said, the long and short is that one reason for pH monitoring and adjustment is efficiency.

The second reason for pH tracking and treatment is based on the concept that the beer pH follows the mash pH. Why is that important?

Well the second example of the Pilsen region which has a much more acidic water profile, adding the grain profile of something like a stout would give you a low pH reading. This will cause you to get very dull flavor, soapy tastes, or tannin extraction depending on how high the pH is, however, it does not sound like your efficiency will be adversely effected by this.

So now that we have established that there is a reason to treat your wart and to track your pH, what do you do?

First off, get your local water report. In this there are three main parts to watch out for; calcium, magnesium, and bicarbonate concentration. I will use my Syracuse water as an example of what you are looking for:

Ontario - Calcium 31, Magnesium n/a, Sodium 17, Sulfate 27, Chloride 27, Bicarbonate n/a
Otisco - Calcium 42, Magnesium 11, Sodium 18, Sulfate 16, Chloride 36 , Bicarbonate n/a

According to the Water board, my water could be either one of these or a combination of the two. The important things to note on this is that there is moderate calcium, low magnesium and no bicarbonate. This profile would complement a pale ale pretty well. For a stout though, I am going to want to add some things to make the water more alkaline.

So now the question is what to add and how much of it do I add?

There are several additives that you can add to your mash to help balance your pH for the style brew that you are making. All of this info is available in MUCH greater detail on John Palmer's site, this is just what I took away from it.

Gypsum or Calcium- pretty universal additive for most water's -this will lower your PH

Calcium Carbonate - though there is calcium in this, the carbonate wins out and the net effect is raising your PH

Acids - They will lower the PH of your your wort-
Sulfate is supposed to be really good, but be aware of sulfate is corrosive and dangerous.
Hydrochloric Acid is good because you can get it at a pool store and most people are accustomed to using it.

OK, almost there. We have established that we want to balance the pH of the wort and we know what things other people put into their wort to achieve this balance, the question is now, how do I know how much of which stuff to put into my wort?

Well based on what I got from John's interview with James, the way to determine how much of any of the adjuncts you will need to calculate the residual alkalinity by taking the total alkalinity and subtract your effective hardness. So from here you will take the calcium concentration and divide by 3.5, magnesium concentration and divide it by 7. From here you take that quantity of effective hardness and subtract that from the alkalinity and this is your residual alkalinity.

Now I am not going to lie, I don't understand the last paragraph that I just wrote. This was based on the notes I took during the interview with John Palmer and it's a little above my pay grade.

So in a more practical sense, you can use one of the Excel spreadsheets from the links listed below that I got from Palmers website. You just punch in your amounts and it will adjust your wort accordingly. listed below that are all of the water profiles for some of the notable brew cities.

John Palmer's Excel spread sheet that makes all these calculations for you here and in metric here.

Water chemistry of classic brewing cities

Pilsen - Calcium 7, Magnesium 2, Sodium 2, Chloride 5, Sulfate 5, Alkalinity 14
Dortmund - Calcium 225, Magnesium 40, Sodium 60, Chloride 60, Sulfate 120, Alkalinity 180
Munich - Calcium 75, Magnesium 18, Sodium, 7, Chloride 10, Sulfate 10, Alkalinity 152
Vienna - Calcium 200, Magnesium 60, Sodium 8, Chloride 12, Sulfate 125, Alkalinity 120
London - Calcium 52, Magnesium 16, Sodium 99, Chloride 60, Sulfate 77, Alkalinity 156
Burton - Calcium 268, Magnesium 62, Sodium 54, Chloride 36, Sulfate 638, Alkalinity 200
Dublin - Calcium 118 , Magnesium 4, Sodium 12, Chloride 19, Sulfate 54, Alkalinity 319

Please keep in mind (assuming you took the time to read all of this) that this is my understanding of pH and it's relation to the brew process. I welcome any input from folks that know more than me (Ted I am looking in your direction) so please feel free to provide feedback.

Cheers!

Fun with beer

So Saturday morning we got up bright and early and had ourselves a great brew day. I had the water on the flame by 6:30am! Nick showed up at 7 with some Mcd's treats and we were off.

We struck the water at about 174f because we were not paying attention. Now my beer smith is always saying 170 to strike at 158f, but we are usually closer to 152 when we strike at 170. When we took the striking water off of the heat, we were climbing above 174 and just put it on. We were able to strike at exactly 158.

Beer smith also called for 9.62gal of water to strike the 26lbs+ of grain we had. This is where we ran into a problem that we have been having for a while now, the Igloo Ice Cube Cooler we have is 12 gallons and does not handle the 10 gallon batches very well. So we were only able to strike 8 1/2 gallons.

We held it for 60 min and the temp kept at between 158 and 157 for the whole time despite the cool temps on Saturday morning. That's the little mash tun that could!

After 60min, we took the last gallon that we were going to add and got it up to a boil so that we could get the temp up for mash out. We ran some of the wort off into the brew pot to make room for the mash out and added the boiling water being sure to stir pretty aggressively to avoid hot spots. Once the grain bed had a steady temp of 168-170, we let it hold for 10 min and started up our batch sparge water.

We did two batch sparges, the first was 5 gallons and the second was 3 and both were at 170f. We were planning on a 90 min boil so we wanted to have 13 gallons to start with and we got that and then some.

Our pre-boil gravity 1.035, which was lower than the 1.041 beer smith told us we should have, but as the intrepid brewers we are, we brewed on!

After getting a few close calls on boil overs, we were able to get a healthy rolling boil and started the 90 min boil process. I was glad we got started early because there was no rush and we were able to wait the full 1/2 hr before adding the first hops. We added the 4oz of Golding's (5%) into the hop bag and let it dangle.

Our final hops addition was 1 oz at 5 min and some irish moss for good luck.

We separated the wort into two buckets and split the 1000ml starter between the two. We ended up using London Ale (1028) for the brew as Ed was out of 1335. It's an interesting yeast. After using the ESB and American Ale for the last few brews, it's noticeable that the London is a lot slower out of the gates that the other two. But it's chugging away now.

Our OG would up at 1.054 which was exactly what we were looking for, so I am assuming the additional time we used in the boil helped. We dry hopped it with an OZ each of Cascade leaf hops (5%) and the airlock has a very hoppy smell coming out of it.

Ted sent me a message on the previous post concerned with our dangerously low aroma hops rate and I have to thank him. If a fellow brewer gives you an excuse to add more hops, take it! I think I am going to pick up another OZ of the same leaf hops to add to the secondary and maybe a third to hop to the keg! Who knows.

Anyway, all is well at the brew house.

Cheers!

PS- The brew is going to be called "Red Face Ale" after the guy passed out in the picture.

Back at it with a red ale

So after an election week break (I hope everyone went out and voted!) we are back in business. We decided that this week we were going to brew up a nice hoppy American Red Ale. We were going for something along the lines of a fat tire red ale and a few others we saw.

Listed below is the 10 gallon recipe we came up with:

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.00 gal
Boil Size: 12.55 gal
Estimated OG: 1.054 SG
Estimated Color: 12.3 SRM
Estimated IBU: 38.6 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 59.0 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------

18.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 72.1 %
3.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 13.6 %
3.50 lb Munich Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 13.6 %
0.15 lb Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 0.6 %
4.00 oz Goldings, B.C. [5.00%] (60 min) Hops 36.6 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50%] (5 min) Hops 2.0 IBU
1.00 oz Centenial [5.00%] (Dry Hop 8 days) Hops -
1 Pkgs London Ale (Wyeast Labs #1028) Yeast-Ale


Mash Schedule: My Mash
Total Grain Weight: 25.65 lb
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temp Step Time
Step Add 9.62 gal of water at 168.4 F158.0 F 70 min
Mashout Heat to 168.0 F over 2 min 168.0 F 10 min

This should come together nicely. It seems as though it's going to be a pretty hoppy red ale, obviously not like Cascazilla (Ithaca Brewing) or anything, but it should have a nice hop profile.

Nick made this recipe and this is his first stab at playing around with the creation of recipes. I will hopefully have a few more posts in the next few days to catch up on a few things that happened while I was running around including a cider update, new kegs and a keg system I built with Nick.

Cheers!

PS- I also entered the old balls into a brewing contest based out in Saratoga.

5 gallons of cider brewing

So as I said before, I want to provide some details about brewing cider. Nick picked up 13 gallons of UV pasteurized cider from a cider mill north of us (I will spare sharing their name because according to NYS law, they are not supposed to sell us unpasteurized cider, stupid NY laws).

The plan was to make 10 gallons of cider that would have an OG of 1.060 and finish at around 1.011 using an American Ale yeast. We brewed the 10 gallons together by adding Camden tablets to both of the 4 gallon buckets. There was 2 gallons left over for the cider and another 3 gallons that Nick was using for another project. With the 2 gallons we put it on the stove and got the temperature up to 170 and added 6 cups of cane sugar, 6 cups of brown sugar, and the zest and juice of 2 lemons.

We held the two gallons at 170 for about 20 min and added a gallon each into the 4 gallon batches. Because Nick is much better at math than me, we hit our OG dead on!

So far it has been bubbling away for about 8 days and it's still at 1.030. It's making it's way down to 1.011 so I am just going to let it run for a while. After it's done with the primary, I am going to let it sit in secondary for a while, maybe a month or so, and I am going to bottle it carbonated in my growlers.

I would like to age some of this because I am not ape shit about cider as a whole. With that said, I am excited to try this and I think it will be a really fun drink to break out with my friends. I don't think it's going to be my "coming home from a long day of work" brew, but that's okay.

Cheers!

Something smells like sulfur!

This past weekend I went over to Nick's place and we worked on our pumpkin ale. We also did a cyder that I will write a post about as soon as I get the details from Nick on what we used and what we did.

What I am writing about today though was the