Tag: Brew day

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Brew Day, July 2018 – Cellar Management and Meads

Between the heat, things to do around the house, and the proximity to Pennsic, this month’s Brew Day was mostly cellar management. I got the beers from May kegged, and pulled a few 2.5-gallon carboys to make a couple of meads.

Cellar Management – Kegging Brews

The first of the May brews was my experiment in direct-firing the mash. Overall, it was a success for what it was–but I’d have to revamp the recipe if I were to do it again. It came out a most peculiar orange color, and the malt “backbone” was off. I’m not certain just how to describe it, really. I think if I switch the amounts of the two base malts, it would come out better. (I had 11 pounds of Munich, and 5 pounds of Vienna; so swap them to 5 of Munich and 11 of Vienna.) The hops need tweaking, as well. I think move the First Wort addition to a straight 60-minute addition; move the 10-minute addition back to 20-30 minutes, and add a whirlpool dose.

The second one to keg was for my friend Dominic; we brewed up a Pilsner-ish for him. (He’s very much of the “lighter is better” opinion.) When racking it into the keg, my only comment was “this is the most Dominic beer we’ve ever done.” It’ll be a step beyond “pale straw” color, I think. Corona is probably darker. The malt and hops are well-balanced, but very light. Tasty, and it’ll be great chilled at Pennsic.

Both beers were cloudy–my experiment much more so than the Pilsner.  And mine in particular was rather phenolic, a sign that things fermented warmer than the yeasts would have liked. But then, the cellar is running a very warm 80 degrees right now, supposedly–I think it’s probably more like high 70’s most of the time. So something needs to be done about that, in the long run.

Thoughts on future plans

I’m thinking more and more about switching my summer brewing over to a kveik yeast. They’re supposedly good up towards 110 degrees, even, fermenting cleanly the whole way.  I’ll have to wait until after Pennsic to try one, obviously, but I’m eager to see.

I do have a couple of questions about them: how would they do for a mead? How well do they flocculate (drop out of suspension)?  Things like that. Fodder for future experiments.

In the meantime, if I continue with “regular” yeasts in summertime brews, I’ll have to see about setting up a water bath for the fermenters, even down in the cellar. (Or turn off the dehumidifier for the duration of the ferment, but everything else in the cellar would be the worse for wear.) In the long run, of course, I hope to convert the “Garage” (currently my wood shop) into the “Brewery,” and set up some sort of dedicated cool space for fermenting and serving.

New Brews

This evening I’ll be mixing up a pair of meads to go in the fermenters I mentioned above. Both will be 2.5-gallon batches; one will be a blackberry melomel, and the other a Pinot Noir pyment.

The main thing about these two batches is that I’ll be moving out of my comfort zone, and using yeasts that I’m not as familiar with: 71B for the melomel, and RC-212 for the pyment. My “normal” go-to for meads is D-47. It plays well with most fruits, leaves a moderate sweetness, and actually improves over time when left on the lees.

I’m going with the “new” yeasts for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’d like to expand my “library” some. I think I’ve learned and progressed a bit from my early days, when I used whatever wine yeast was available, as long as it was EC-1118. I’d like to see what these other yeasts can bring to the table. I mean, I keep seeing 71B mentioned as people’s preferred mead yeast, but I don’t have much experience with it, and a half-batch is a good way to learn. And finally, all of these yeasts evolved to do great things in their particular environments–RC-212 is great for red wines; 71B supposedly enhances berry flavors.

Each of these batches will get 5 pounds of clover honey, if only because that’s what I’ve got available. I’ll dose them up with staggered nutrients, too, then move them down to the cellar for the medium-term. I figure they’ll probably clear by early September, and I can get them bottled in September, then serve them up for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

(Note to self: set up calendar reminders to go check on them periodically, to make sure the airlocks don’t dry out…)

Hopleaf Mead Update, Cellar ManagementWhile I’m on the subject, the Hopleaf Mead continues to do its thing. It’s clearing up pretty nicely, and the hop leaves are surprising me a little by slowly sinking to the bottom. I’ll probably give it another week or two, simultaneously giving me time to find one of my other gallon jugs, then rack it onto some sorbate and hit it with some sort of finings before bottling it.

I’ll admit to being quite curious how this one turns out. My prediction is that the leaves will, at the absolute most, only mildly affect the flavor, and it’ll be a subtle “there’s something unusual here, but I’m not sure what.”

Bizarre Idea as a Closing Thought

This came to me in one of those half-asleep moments a while back: I should make a true “Frankenstein” batch. I’ve got techniques for malting and brewing from period. I’ve got grains from period (once I get enough of them grown up). In theory, I know how to get hops from period–or, failing that, at least their first-generation descendants. Yeast from period? Kveik (well, period enough). Add some honey (ideally from my hives), a la Trossingen. Ferment it up in a barrel, and serve it casked (either through a beer engine, or simply tapping the barrel).

Lots of planning and work would have to go into it–I’d need to grow enough Bere, and grow up the hops. I wouldn’t want to use a new barrel, so I’d have to run a few batches through one, to “mute” the oak a little…

But I think this would be a wonderful thing to do, in addition to my (already-planned) “Estate Beer.” What say you, readers?  Comments welcome below, or via email. (Speaking of which–I’m trying to get the blog’s email list function working; if you sign up, I won’t “spam” you, but only send at most a monthly newsletter, and notifications when I put up a new post. I hope you’ll give it a go!)

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Brew Day, May 2018: Two brews, one experiment

Beer and a little watermelon while brewing

The brewday for this month went of well, with the weather finally deciding to cooperate after a solid week of rain. Downtown flooded, but as we’re on a hill, with a slope away from the house in all directions, we didn’t get any of that. There was a little water seepage in the cellar, but the full extent was a little bit of mud.

Two batches were brewed: a Pils for my friend Dominick, based on a Stella Artois clone, and an experiment for myself, which I’ll get to in a moment. The pils I believe is going to be nice, if not exactly “to style.” I don’t have a setup right now to truly lager, but I can ferment fairly cool in the cellar. It was a simple grain bill, with 9.5 pounds of Pilsner malt. The hops were Saaz, added at the beginning, and with 5 minutes to go in the boil (1.5 ounces and .5 ounces, respectively). Dominick picked out WLP830, German Lager yeast. Volumes came out decently, and the gravity ended at about 1.046; I think it’ll be about 4.5% ABV, and the color should be straw gold. The hope is to have it ready for Pennsic.

The other batch was, as I mentioned, a bit of an experiment. The recipe was a riff off of my “scaled” Braunschweig Stadtmumme recipe: Munich and Vienna malts, with a healthy dose of German hops. I went for the higher-Alpha Herkules, rather than Tettnang, partly because I wanted something with some bittering to balance the Munich, and partly because I wanted to try them out. Nottingham yeast, to keep things simple. (The full recipe will be below.)

The crux of the “experiment” part, though, was the mash. Rather than my typical infusion/batch-sparge style, I went with a direct-fired mash, starting everything (grains and water together) at room temperature. This, again, is based on my reading of the Mumme recipes. They didn’t infuse, nor did they decoct; rather, they heated the mash for an hour and a quarter. That timeframe confused me at first, because it almost sounded like they were “simply” mashing for 75 minutes. But the more I thought about it, the more I figured that a properly-shaped vessel, with a strong enough fire under it, would probably get the volumes given in the original recipe (2172 pounds of grain, with “enough” water) up to the right temperatures in about that amount of time.

I went with 16 pounds of grain overall, and water to bring the overall volume up to about 9.75 gallons (about 34 quarts, give or take). With a pretty low flame on my propane burner, it took me about an hour–near enough to the original time–to get to my target mash temperature of 152 degrees F.  I stirred constantly, to try to prevent any scorching, but still got a small amount (maybe 4 square inches of “scorch”).

My reasoning for starting from room temperature is that they didn’t specify any mash steps, and didn’t indicate adding the malt to hot water. The ramp up from ~70 degrees F progressively all the way to ~152 F took the mash through all of the intermediate steps–liquefaction, acid rest, protein rest, glucan, then saccharification. Rather than discrete steps, they “slid” up through the entire scale.

Once I had the mash at temp, I turned off the burner, and a friend and I transferred the mash to my “normal” mash tun (an Igloo cooler, with a false bottom). I let it sit another 20 minutes, partly to complete whatever conversion it was going to do, and partly to let the grain bed settle somewhat. Then I ran off the wort, using a large bowl to recirculate the first gallon or so.

My yield pre-boil was a little lower than I might have liked, netting about 6.5 gallons; while the kettle I fired the mash in could have held more, the cooler was about at its limit. (I either need to make the beer “smaller,” with less grain, or find a bigger mash tun.) Otherwise, everything went off without a hitch. The batch is currently happily fermenting in my cellar, and I’ll have to wait until next month to see how things have gone.

Fermented beer and leesOne other “achievement” for today was kegging last month’s batch. It turned out quite nicely, as a sort of “lawn-mower beer.” Pale golden, light in body, and astoundingly clear. In fact, here’s a picture of the last few inches of beer in the fermenter, with the sediment clearly visible through it. I think this will be a lovely Pennsic beer, nice and crisp and thirst-quenching.

This month’s recipe, with ingredient links to MoreBeer:

Closer to Stadtmumme

11 pounds of Munich Malt
5 pounds of Goldpils Vienna Malt
1.5 ounces of Herkules leaf hops (11.3% Alpha, first wort hops)
1 Whirlfloc tablet (15 minutes in the boil)
1.5 ounces of Herkules leaf hops (11.3% Alpha, 10 minutes in the boil)
1 packet Nottingham dry yeast

Direct-fire the mash from room temp up to ~152 degrees, over the course of an hour. Initial boil volume ~6.5 gallons. Boil 1 hour. Final volume, 5 gallons. Initial Gravity: 1.073.

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Working Up To Bockbier

I will, one day, brew the full version of my proposed Einbecker Bier (the “original” Bockbier). That day, however, was not today.

Today’s Brew Day, on Saturday as opposed to the normal Sunday due to outside scheduling conflicts, was playing around a bit with the bones of the basic recipe (which can be found in another post–as soon as I get it written and published). I kept the 2/3 barley, 1/3 wheat grist, but scaled it back from a 1.078 SG to a planned mid-1.050’s–and then hit 1.068 anyway. This should bring the ABV down from about 7.5% to a more quaffable not quite 6%. I also stepped away from the Munich malt in favor of Vienna, which should give a breadier maltiness. (In my opinion, Munich can almost get overwhelming when used in large percentages–almost a chewy meatiness, if you will. It’s not bad, but generally needs to be either less than 100% of the malt bill, or hit with a large dose of hops). It also dialed the color back from garnet-amber to somewhere in the gold range, where the original Bockbier was (described in period as “golden”–and more detail will be in the afore-mentioned post).

Low-tech Brew Rig, starting out on Almost Bockbier Brew Day
My trusty, somewhat rusty, Brew Rig, ready to start heating strike water.

I’ve also fooled around with the hop schedule: where the original was all bittering hops all the time, I’m doing FWH and some late hops. This should add a bit of hop complexity, even though it’s still a single-hop beer. It’s all Tettnang whole-leaf hops, because I’ve got a bunch of them waiting to be used. (As of this writing, they’re harder to get hold of as whole-leaf; here’s a link to some Tett pellets.)

Lastly, I went with White Labs San Francisco Lager yeast. This choice was made to cover a number of issues. First and second, the temps in my cellar have been fluctuating around the low 50’s; too warm for most lagers, but too cold for most ales-and I want this to be more lager-like, which pretty much means Kolsch yeast or San Fran. Third, given the weather has finally turned, everyone is brewing this weekend, and the yeast selection at my LHBS was pretty well decimated. None of my first, second, or third yeast choices were available, so here we are.

As things are wont to do, technical snags abounded. My first propane tank ran out while I was heating the sparge water; when I unscrewed the regulator, its O-ring broke. After quickly scrambling and scrounging out all of the other suitable propane hoses I’ve got, I determined that none of them had functional O-rings. A trip to the hardware store later, and my channel-lock pliers had wandered off–making connecting my second propane tank complex.

But, all things considered, it was a good day. The weather was nice, beer was brewed, and no one was killed in the making of today.

The recipe, for the curious. This is #164, in my Little Black Book.

Almost Bockbier
9 pounds Vienna Malt
3 pounds Wheat Malt
2 ounces Tettnang leaf hops (3.7% AA, FWH)
1 tablet Whirlfloc (15 min. in boil)
1 ounce Tettnang leaf hops (3.7% AA, 10 minutes in boil)
1 packet WLP-810 San Francisco Lager Yeast

Mash at 156 degrees F.  Sparge to 8 gallons pre-boil.  Boil for one hour. OG: 1.068, 5.5 gallons into the fermenter. Ferment at “cellar temps” (currently upper 50’s F).
(Brewed 14 April 2018)

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Brew Day, January 2016

The winter barley is getting its first snowfall of the year (!). Chickens are giving us the occasional egg, mostly holding out for slightly longer days. I probably could have harvested hops, if everything hadn’t gotten away from me; they’ll have to wait for this year. Likewise much of the garden. On the bright side, there were no real disasters, so I’ve got that.

I’m brewing regularly again. In fact, there’s an historical-ish English ale coming up to a boil as I type this. I’ve got a half-batch moscat pyment on deck, for my wife. And I’ve got to decide what to make next month… I’m leaning towards a brown ale, for drinking in the late spring or early summer.

Also on deck, I’ll be a beekeeper, come springtime (mid-May or so). I’m looking forward to it, and not just for the honey and wax. I’ve long been interested in bees, and now I’ll get to work with them up-close.

Here’s to a new year, and new excitement!

Harrison’s Wife’s Ale (this recipe is #148 in Misha’s Little Black Book)

8 lbs Maris Otter malt
2 lbs Dark wheat malt
1 lb Oat malt
2 oz East Kent Goldings pellet hops (4.6% AA, 1 hour)
1 Whirlfloc tablet (15 minutes)
1 pack Wyeast 1098 British Ale Yeast

Mash at ~158F for 1 hour. Pre-boil wort volume 7.5 gallons.
Boil 1 hour, hopping to schedule.
OG: 1.052
(Kegged 21 Feb 2016. Color was surprisingly light.)

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Barley, Round II: One-Month Check In

Okay, the winter barley has been in the ground for about a month now, and it’s time for a check-up.  They’re doing fine; I’d put overall growth at almost a foot.  I gave the growing plants a “haircut” about two weeks ago, clipping them from ~9 inches down to ~4 1/2; my reasoning for this was multifold: a) the deer did it (and more severely!) last year, and it didn’t hurt them a bit; b) I wanted to suppress any excessive tillering before the first frost, to promote having a more established root system; c) something had been sleeping in the tall, lush “grass”, and I wanted to discourage it; and d) some high winds were making things “lay down” a bit more than I liked, and I wanted to minimize whatever damage might occur.

A more experienced farmer might allow point “b” as sensible, and the rest as unnecessary/irrelevant, but there it is–I couldn’t come up with a good reason not to, and had at least 4 reasons for doing it.  Regardless, they bounced right back within about a week.  (For the curious, whatever had been laying down in the barley–possibly a rabbit, squirrel, or chipmunk–stopped.)

The deck on the Undisclosed Location has been completed–well, all the decking is down, anyway.  I’ve still got the pergola to build, as well as steps and possibly a handrail or two.  Additionally, I’m looking at a smaller stoop out of the side-door from the UDL, with a ramp down to the decking, but that will require the removal of a few trees.  I’ve also got to get moving on trash removal–the debris-pile from the various construction we’ve been doing has reached ridiculous proportions.  Still, progress has been made overall.

It is with this in mind that I’m calling for the first Brew Day at the new house: November the 16th, 2013.  I haven’t yet decided exactly what I’ll brew, or any further details than that. I’ll update as I can!

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Brew Day October 2010, and Bochet

While I’ve been lax in updating this blog, I’ve been (reasonably) active with some experimentation.  My last brew day, one week ago today, saw one modified “normal” batch and one experimental, and I’ll be whipping up two more experimental batches tomorrow evening.

The modified batch was a version of my (quite popular) Kolsch recipe, but with the volume turned up to 11.  I believe it will end more like a pale ale than anything else.  I was down to basically dregs on my current base malt stash, and decided to use it all; this bumped the starting gravity up about 25-30 points.  I increased the bitterness by a similar amount, keeping the BU:GU ratio roughly the same…  It will still be quite pale, I believe–something in the golden range–but with a firm bittering, and a solid malt backbone.

The experimental batch was based on the idea of caramelizing honey for a mead.  Several folks have done so-called “bochet”, or “burnt” meads, with the results being described as different, if not entirely to their liking.  I was going for a slightly less “cooked” flavor, and hoping for an improved color.  (Not that a straw-gold mead is a bad thing, but it’s just a bit… well, overdone.)  I took my “spare” pot (7.5 gallons) and emptied 10lbs of wildflower honey into it.  With a touch of water to rinse the honey containers, the total volume was right about 1 gallon.

1 gallon honey in a 7 gallon pot
Honey, before the boil

All accounts that I’ve read regarding boiling/caramelizing honey when making bochet indicate that it foams up quite a lot.  I had planned on simply stirring like mad to keep it from boiling over; let me recommend instead using a very low flame.  The stuff literally tried to crawl out of the pot.

Honey boiling for bochet
45 minutes into the boil; still climbing the pot, but a lovely color.

I boiled for about an hour, all told; the honey turned a lovely deep amber, and even my kids commented on the “caramel” smell.  A second word of warning for those who would follow in my footsteps:  bees can smell the honey cooking.  They will come to try to “rescue” it.  Lots of them will.  At the end of the hour, there were about 6 big bumblebees and maybe 15-20 honeybees swarming the pot.  At least three of the honeybees gave their lives trying to grab some of the honey–they got “caught” by bursting bubbles, and fell into the pot.  I don’t think they’ll throw the flavor off by much, though.  At any rate, the end result is quite pretty, and is (still) fizzing away happily.

Bochet and Kolsch
The mead and the Kolsch; the mead is the dark one just left of center.

As for tomorrow’s adventures, I’ll be throwing together some more meads–a few folks over on the GotMead forums have some “quick” meads, supposedly ready-to-drink in 3-5 weeks.  We shall see.  I’ll try to document those here, with pics.

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Brew, BBQ, family, and friends.

If ever there was a recipe for a better Brew Day, I don’t know what it is. Had a couple of friends over (could have had more–you know who you are!), BBQ’ed some chicken, brewed up a batch of stout (to become Blackberry Stout, when all is said & done), and generally had a good time. The weather has been decent, so we spent the day outside. The yard is dirtscaped (no grass to speak of), and it’s a tad hot with no shade out there, but we all endured–copious amounts of homebrew helped, especially the wit. I’d say that a good time was had by all.

Next month will quite possibly be my last brew day until late September or early October–I’ll be off on a business trip for about two months. Much experimentation and tasting will be in order while I’m out. I’ll try to manage a brew in early July, but there’s no telling. Hopefully, I can have the majority of the HERMs system put together by then.

My Lady Wife assisted with a tasting/judging at Sapphire Joust yesterday; she’s now even more eager to bring general A&S standards to the brewing community. We (they?) have been a bit lax, or so it seems to me. I mean, the reason I didn’t enter the most recent Kingdom Brewer is that I don’t/didn’t have anything that I would enter into an SCA event–even though a couple of my brews at the time were fantastic–just not documentable. Between that and the cognitive dissonance with the standards for containers, I’m not keen on doing SCA brewing competitions, generally. Maybe in future; we’ll see.

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Brew Day, April 2009

This Sunday, at the request (insistence?) of my Lady Wife, I will be brewing a Cherry Brown Ale. I’m basing the foundation (the Brown Ale) on the Southern English Brown Ale recipe from Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew. It looks like a solid brew, as have been every other recipe I’ve tried from the book. The plan is to let it primary as per normal, then rack it onto a can of Oregon Cherry Puree; allow it to re-ferment to completion, then keg. It should be a simple beer, and hopefully it will turn out well.

I also plan to attack the non-alcoholic brews again, trying another root beer. I believe I learned from the last root beer I tried (which ended up a case of gushers). In the grand scheme, as long as the flavor and mouthfeel are there, and there are *only* sufficient fermentables for priming the bottles, it should be OK. Or, it could end up a foul, vile brew. I’ll be boiling up the ‘regular’ ingredients, less the sugar; cooling the ‘tea’ of sassafras root, etc., then adding the entirety of a bag of Splenda. That will give it non-fermentables for sweetness and mouthfeel. Carbtabs will provide sugar for carbonation. A bold experiment? Well, an experiment, at any rate. Time will tell how it turns out. (This recipe will be #82 in Misha’s Little Black Book.)

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Halloween Brew Day, 2008

The (inaugural?) Halloween Midnight Brew went nearly without a hitch. Technically, everything went as expected; socially, it went basically as expected, also.

In the social aspect, it ended up being just me doing the brew. Hopefully, next time I can convince a few more people to come over. Still, I often find that doing a solo brew goes more smoothly than doing one with others around. (I’d rather have a few others around, if only so I can chat with them as I go.)

The burners were lit precisely at midnight; by half-past, the grain was being mashed. A hair over 22 pounds of grain, it turns out, is about half of my mash-tun capacity. (Good to know, I think…) I even had room enough that I could have done two infusions, had I wanted. Three might have been stretching it.

Due to the lack of other participants, and looking at the time, and having had a really long day, I decided that I had fulfilled the spirit of my goal, and decided to allow the mash to go overnight. I picked up where I had left off at about 9:30 on Saturday morning, heating water for the sparge.

My experience with ‘big’ brews has shown me that my efficiency tends to suffer; I’m not certain of the mechanics of why, but I accept the ‘fact-of.’ I only got around 68% efficiency, as opposed to my more typical 75%; still, things were well within acceptable norms. The boil was remarkably well-behaved, and I only lost a couple of ounces to boil-over. The re-constructed pump worked well. I even heated up a couple of gallons of plain water to help with clean-up (especially the pump). The yeast had been pitched by noon, and active fermentation was underway by nightfall Saturday. I may tweak the spice blend, should I do this again–maybe ditch the nutmeg, add perhaps a little ginger, bump up the cinnamon. Still, come the end of a year, it will be a nice brew, I’m sure.

I haven’t decided when my next brew day will be; probably the weekend before Thanksgiving. That’s rather late in the month, but it’s the only one I have really free; hopefully, my December brew day will be earlier.

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University, October 2008

Yesterday was Atlantian University, and I taught my long-awaited Intro to All-Grain Brewing class. (Well, long-awaited by me, anyway.) Things seemed to go pretty well. I think that I’ll stretch the class out to 2 hours next time, as that’s really a *lot* of information to go through in an hour; I felt a little rushed for parts of it. 2 hours would also give me the opportunity to bring in a bit of equipment to help describe what’s going on for the brew.

One thing that the class was good for was creating a number of new contacts. It seems that there are a number of folks both (relatively) locally and within a reasonable driving distance who want to learn to brew. Everyone who was in my class now has the URL for this site, as well as for my webpage; by extension, this means they have my email address, and we can arrange further hands-on classes at a later date. [2018 Edit: Those were my old blog and webpage; everything is here, now. -M]

Also, I let everyone there know about my upcoming Brew Day, a week from today. I believe I’ll try for ‘take two’ of the Kolsch that practically disappeared last weekend. I’ll have to use the Golden Promise malt, rather than the American Pale 2-Row that I used last time, but that should only improve the brew, I would think. Regardless, it’s more beer, which is always a good thing, right?