Disaster Mitigation Update

It was a huge sigh of relief.  I woke this morning and wandered into the brewery to check on the fermentation.  I left last night with no signs of life in the beer, not a bubble, not a spec of hops debris floating, nothing.  I found this morning that a normal fermentation was going with a nice frothy top and the carbon dioxide was bubbling out of the top as it should be.


After yesterday, I was fully expecting the worst.


Now, if I just can find my camera.

Brewing Session 1: Disaster Mitagation (an American Pale Ale)

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods"  Albert Einstein

It was one of those days.  It was supposed to be an easy day, but everything went wrong.  I have been brewing some decent beers as of late.  I was bursting with pride.  I was starting to think I was hot shit, but now I know myself to be a fool.


The high was 11 degrees today, but the cold just made a bad day miserable.  The brewing session started badly.  We got a late start.  My friend had purchased the grain from his local homebrew shop but the weather delayed his arrival.  So, I was in a hurry to get going.  I poured the grains in the mash tun without checking to see if the false bottom was properly seated.  It wasn't.  I had to dump it out, reclean out the vessel and start again.


Since the grains came from a different source, I knew that their milling was going to be different, and from the last time we used this source, I knew it would be a little finer.  It was a lot finer.  For the first time, I had a stuck mash (where the grains get compacted and won't allow wort to flow out of the mash tun).  I had to stir the grain bed to get the wort out.


Since the sparge took extra time, I had a boil over when I was pre-heating the first runnings. We didn't have enough water to sparge (with the stuck mash and all), so had to heat some more.  For some stupid reason (I can't fathom now), I thought I should add water pre-boil to make up for some of the loss.  No sooner did I add it then my friend came out with the last of the wort (I thought I had it all).  So after all that, we didn't have the time to boil off my mistake.


Oh, and I almost forgot.  I used extra water to rinse some of the boil over out onto the driveway.  Where it promptly turned to a sheet of ice....you guessed it.  I set myself a trap and went sprawling on my way to the dumpster....thank goodness I wasn't carrying the hot kettle, or holding a beer.


I also decided to use my American II Ale yeast for a 4th generation, but instead of racking onto the yeast cake like I had done the other times, I racked the last beer and took a cup per carboy or so of the cake a couple of days ago.  It had shown signs of life in the jar, but so far, after 4 hours, no signs of fermentation in the carboy.  If there is nothing in the morning, I will have to grab fresh yeast from my local homebrew shop..


At the end of the day, I have a 1.044 starting gravity on a beer that was supposed to be 1.055, and may not have it fermenting.  I did learn a couple of things, however.


First.  The stuck mash convinced me that I need to buy a good grain mill like this one from Monster Brewing Hardware to control my own grist milling.  My homebrew shop obviously doesn't mill it as fine as others (as such, this is probably the reason that my efficiencies are consistently so low).  I also learned that when you have a more fine milling, my usual method of batch sparging does not work.  The weight of the water compacts the grains and creates the stuck mash.  The slow sprinkle method using a sparge arm finally makes sense to me now.  We were only able to get the sparge going by adding just a little water at a time.


Other problems were caused because I set up my mash tun in the basement (usually it is outside near our boiling operation) due to the cold weather.  I did not know that I didn't have all of the wort, and added water.  There was nobody there to question my actions since my friend was downstairs doing some clean up.  It would be nice if I could work all in one area.  This is a flaw of my house, my brewery set up is kind of like a bad kitchen layout.  My clean up area is in my laundry room on the north side of the basement, the spigot outside is on the south side of my house, and my boiling area is in my detached garage on the west side of my lot.  A lot of trouble would be solved if I had a sink in my garage and could do fermentation out there somehow.  I have to work out some better system.  Maybe someday I will build me a proper brewery/shed/man cave with running water.  Another item for the wish list.


Well, the beer won't be what we expected, but if it starts to ferment at all, it will be beer, and it might surprise us.  I hope that this brewing session isn't a harbinger for 2010.

Brewing More in 2010

I brewed at least 9 batches of beer in 2010.  That equates to over 3 barrels (approximately 96 gallons total) of beer and somewhere between 900 and 1,000 bottles of beer.  I didn't drink them all.  Half went to my brother or other co-brewers, and I like to give away and share beer with my friends, family, and neighbors whenever I can. 


One of my goals for this year is to brew More, even though I brewed more last year than I ever had before.  I think the emphasis is on the word More.  I would not be upset to brew less than 96 gallons.  I might, however, be upset to only brew 9 times.  I would be pleased to brew only 6 times if I knocked my own socks off with the beer I brewed.  That said, I want to practice brewing whenever I can.  Real life is sure to get in the way, as my wife and kids have their own agenda involving me, but I want to get the most (get more?) out of every batch I brew.  


I wouldn't mind brewing with more people.  I got the chance last year to show brewing to a person that had never brewed before, and do all-grain beers with two people that had previously only brewed with extracts.  It was a lot of fun teaching, but I had good and motivated students.  It might be nice to brew with other people on their equipment, especially those who might have nicer (or more complex) rigs then I.  Everyone does things a little differently, and emphasize different aspects of the process.  I am in need of learning more hands on tips, tricks, or see equipment used that improves the beer or makes the process quicker, easier, or safer.  I should join a local brewing club, but am not sold on the idea.  I have been reluctant to do so for many personal reasons and past experiences, but perhaps this is the year I just suck it up and do it.


I had also had the chance to brew by myself a few times this past year.  I usually brew with my brother (or occasionally friends).  I did enjoy the quiet time and introspection of this personal endeavor.  I do like having company for the clean up, though.  If I get the chance, I should try to brew alone more, especially if I make improvements to my brewery and need to understand procedure.


Brewing more means I want to brew with absolute intention.  I want to have each beer turn out how I think it should, how I intend it to.  I would accept the beer turning out better than hope for as well.  The beer should not only look and taste how I want it to, but I would also like for it to have at least the starting gravity and volume that I am shooting for (without adding adjuncts or extract to hit that gravity).  This might be a bridge too far, as another resolution of mine is to make process and equipment changes to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and try to be environmentally and economically friendly.  So, I want to experiment more.  Definitely, I want to get more satisfaction out of brewing, get more better beer, and experience more and different brewing experiences.  I want to learn more about what is happening from what we do as brewers.  I want more people to taste my beer, and I want more (and better) feedback.  This probably means I need to enter my beer in more competitions, even though I am not really competitive.  I don't want to necessarily win (although it might be nice).


Certainly, I want more out of 2010 than I had gotten out of 2009.  I intend to push for it. 

Contemplating 2010

I have been thinking about what I want to accomplish in 2010. While my personal list is a mile long, my brewing specific list boils (pun intended) down to a few general themes.

2010

1. Brew More (Do More, Learn More, Teach More, Live More)

2. Spend less per batch/beer, and try to be more ecologically friendly

3. Improve processes

4. Replace/upgrade equipment that will enable us to accomplish goals 1, 2, and 3.

I plan on expanding on these in the next few days. I hope I can outline my plans before I brew again (tentative plans to brew a batch with my friend this coming week). If you have ideas along these lines, please make comments along the way. Your journey is mine as well, constant reader.

My best regards to you and yours this year,

g

Anchor Porter

I found a six pack of Anchor Porter at my neighborhood liquor store (the upscale one, not the ghetto one) so I bought one to compare with our Porter.

....and the winner is....

Anchor.

This is not a surprise, but one can always dream.

I did a sequential tasting (one after the other) starting with the Anchor. The Anchor was luscious black velvet with hops. The bitterness was definitely more present, but the mouthfeel was thicker, and the taste was sweeter. Even the head was creamier... I would have liked a little less hops, but it was much, much better than ours. Don't get me wrong, I like our Porter, but I taste a graininess or astringency, and it was our first try at this beer. I recall a similar issue (astringency) with our brown ale, which was one of our first all-grain batches. We entered that beer in the National Homebrew Competition, and received a silver certificate (first round, middle of the pack, labeled as "good", but I don't remember the points it received).

According to John Palmer's book, How to Brew a common cause of graininess or astringencies are from sparging or milling issues. Oversparging or using water that is too hot causes the pH to rise which leaches out tannins and other off flavors. I reject the milling, as it was done on professional equipment at the local homebrew shop. Was this the batch we ran dry too early and ran through some cold water? I felt uneasy about it at the time, and don't know if that constituted oversparging, or caused the flavors I am tasting, but it is my primary suspect.

My brother and I were considering putting this and our West Coast Ale into a local competition in February. It will be interesting to see if they pick up any of the same issues. It will be good to get good feedback.

High Gravity Hi Jinks, update

I racked the Festivus Ale into the secondary today. I waited until I thought the most active fermentation was over. After racking, the fermentation actually picked up its pace again. The Gravity reading was 1.021, which is only 0.003 above the predicted FG. I use a freeware computer program called Qbrew to help calculate such things (if you Google it, I think you can find where to download it). Qbrew is a pretty good program (especially for free), but it has a few quirks in that it does not allow you to customize the gravity or ABV (based on mash temperature, for example) calculations except for setting your efficiency %. Our FG is always a little lower than the predicted, probably as we mash at lower temps during the winter (due to heat loss). At any rate, the fermentation picked back up after racking, but I don't know why.

I have never bothered to rack into a secondary fermentation tank before, but I have never intended to age my beer a while (in oak). There was so much yeast still suspended on top and yeast/trub at the bottom that I was having a hard time keeping the siphon going. The whole experience made me decide that I need some new and longer hoses, and have me wanting to invest in an electric pump.

I can see that with a pump, I am moving towards a semi-professional fixed station brewery (RIMS or HERMS) system where the pump moves water and wort, and even recirculates the wort in the mash system for a more efficient mash and/or a more consistent temperature control. No more lifting hot pots of water, and depending on the set up and location, no more moving 6 gallons of beer in glass carboys (the two most dangerous parts of home brewing). If stainless steel fermenters didn't cost $800 (compared to $45 glass carboys), I would have eliminated the glass a long time ago. Plastic sucks, and I will never go back to that (not even the new plastic conicals). My brother and I share brewing facilities, so if I go to a fixed station, it would still need to be something that disassembles and moves 3 or 4 times a year. I was thinking of using something like the A/V media carts that we used in school to fix hot liquor tank mash tun and kettle into multiple carts. If they can be separated and lifted onto the truck bed, or into a van, then they take up more space, but are easily moved. If I can fix fermenters into a rolling rack as well...that would be much safer. I will put more thought into it and maybe fire up a plan in CAD.

I digress....

I also learned that my brewery maintains a nice 62-64 degree fermentation temperature (perfect for ales, little high for lagers), as the borrowed carboy that I racked into has a temperature strip affixed to it.

The beer will probably finish above 1.015, which means that it will stop fermenting by the end of the holiday weekend. I transferred it early, as I wanted some fermentation to re-establish the Carbon Dioxide oxygen barrier, but I fear that I may have done so too early. I was glad to get the beer away from all of the gunk (yeast, trub, etc.) from three successive brewing sessions, and I can see more of what is going on inside the fermenter. The oak chips are floating on the surface in the newly re-formed krausen (yeasty top). The big question is now, how long should I let it sit before bottling. I was originally thinking of waiting until about February 1st, but I think it probably has more to do with our schedules (when we can get together to finish this). Probably we won't touch it until late January. The beer tasted sweet, but as I had said, it hasn't finished fermenting, so it is unfair to judge it at this point. The cinnemon taste wasn't overwhelming, but again it may assert itself more as the beer dries out (ferments the sweet sugars). It will be good if the beer stays just a little sweet. The color is a nice mahogany red-brown. Who knows how this one will taste in 3-6 months?

I got my new copy of Zymurgy (of which my name and comments appear in the "Ask the Professor" section), and got Charlie Papazian's latest book for Christmas, so I do have some reading to do. I will sit down and enjoy our Porter and catch up with these items this New Year's Eve.

Despite 2009 being such a personally crappy year, I made some fantastic beers (and a few duds) and learned a lot. I just hope that 2010 exceeds both my low personal expectations, and high brewing aspirations.

I realize that I never had discussed my time living in Fort Collins, and have been contemplating another installment of my personal journey.

High Gravity HiJinks

It was our first time brewing a higher gravity beer. I would have bet that before this week, we probably never brewed a beer over 4.5% ABV. Already, I have some insight to report.

We racked the beer directly onto our yeast from our West Coast Red Ale. The day is longer when we bottle a batch and brew on the same day, but somehow more satisfying. You have beer that will be ready to drink by the time this beer will be going into bottles. The real benefit is that you have an extremely quick and vigorous fermentation. This is a blessing (for the beer), but a curse. With a high gravity beer, (our OG was a low 1.067, and were shooting for 1.070) we had a lot of sugar to ferment in our 12 gallon batch. Within an hour, the yeast was overflowing the airlock and spilling onto the floor. I spent a lot of time cleaning yeast and beer off the basement floor. I don't own a large diameter tube to fashion a proper blow off tube, but I rigged one using the airlock and a 1/4" hose and ran that into a glass filled with a bleach solution. In the future, I think we will have to restrict our batch size to 10 gallons (instead of our normal 12), so I don't have so much work.

Also, because this was a "holiday" beer (Festivus if you are asking), we added cinnamon. I was planning on adding 3/4 or one ounce, but my brother at the last minute talked me into the whole 1.5 ounces I had....after reading a tad about it, I fear that I might be sorry about this. Most recipes only add 1-3 teaspoons per 5 gallons (which would be 3-7 for 12 gallons). 1 teaspoon is 0.16 ounces, so we were in the 9 teaspoon range. Perhaps with the blow off and the extended aging we have planned, this will not be such an issue.

After a day and half, fermentation is still vigorous, but I am ready to transfer back to using an airlock again.