Barrel Stout

You know many times when I look back at these posts I see little nuggets of life. This one is interesting. This will be the last batch of beer brewed at my house. I will be moving to a new house.

The homebrew club thought it would be cool to fill a barrel. So we picked a stout to brew and collectively we need to brew 14 batches. I can't leave them hanging.

I'm typing this now in the night many hours after the brew day as I no longer have access to a computer. It's packed. Cause I'm moving.

I remember picking up the ingredients the night before from Vic. The mash went ok. It filled the mash tun. I used Arrowhead spring water. I mashed at 155F. The instructions said to vorluf for 15 mins. I did it for more like 5. The run off went ok.

The boil was 90 mins. I filled that kettle. Lots of turbulent spills to clean up. The cooling went ok as well. In general I was pretty messy. I spilled a whole bunch of wort transferring from kettle to fermenter. I lot on me and my shirt. In the driveway. I had to hose that down. I tried to use a cheese cloth but I burned the draw string and then tried to tie it off but failed and all the hops just ended up in the boil kettle anyway. When I removed it, I just got wort everywhere. I had to clean that up. I forgot to put an air lock on the fermenter lid and ended up putting the thermistor in that hole and got it covered in wort. I was just a mess. Not sure why.

OG was 1.100ish. The wort tasted a little bitter.

One thing I want to point out. I've been stressing about why my beer has been so bad lately and I have an idea. The hose I use in the basin to clean it soooo smelly. I but that's it. I need to replace it.

Below I've pasted the details of the stout from Vic's email.

 Ingredients:

 13.75 lb 2-Row Pale Ale malt (US)

 1 lb Black Barley - 500 SRM (US)

 1 lb Caramel 120 malt (US)

 1 lb Flaked Oats (US)

 1 lb Special B (BEL)

 10 oz Chocolate malt - 350 SRM (US)

 4 lb DME into boil [differing opinions – do some research]

 1 oz Cluster, 8.1% a.a. (FWH)

 1.25 oz Nugget, 14.9% a.a. (60 min)

 1 oz Cluster, 8.1% a.a. (20 min)

 1 oz Cascade, 6.9% a.a. (whirlpool)

 2 pkg Nottingham Dry Yeast [no starter/do rehydrate per Dylan]

Specifications:

Yield: 5 gal (18.9 L)

Original Gravity: 1.111

Final Gravity: 1.031

ABV: 10.70%

IBU: 81

SRM: 53.5

Directions:

Target Water Profile:

 Calcium: 97 ppm

 Magnesium: 8 ppm

 Sodium: 36 ppm

 Sulfate: 46 ppm

 Chloride: 68 ppm

 Bicarbonate: 257 ppm

Single infusion mash at 154° F for 60 minutes. Vorlauf for a minimum

of 15 minutes. Add first wort hops (FWH) to kettle. Fly sparge and

collect wort. Boil for 90 minutes. After boil add whirlpool hops and let

stand for 20 minutes. Chill to 67° F. Pitch yeast and aerate with

oxygen for 1 minute. Primary fermentation at 67° F for 21 days.

Transfer beer to keg and carbonate with 2.0 volumes of CO2. Age in

keg for 30+ days. Alternatively, add necessary amount of priming

sugar and bottle the beer for longer storage. A fermentation vessel

with more head space than usual is a good idea. Use a blow-off tube

and be careful to control the fermentation temperature, especially

during the first several days when fermentation is very active.

Mystery Lager

It's been a long while since I've brewed beer. The family is gone for 4th of July weekend and I've got a little bit of time so I figured I'd brew a batch. I've got two bags of grain in the fridge outside. I have no idea what I had in mind when I bought them. I have no idea how old the ingredients are either. I do remember buying them from the Bearded Brewer just to help him out. He had to close his doors. I'm sure due to Covid. I have no plans to use whirlfloc or yeast nutrients. I can't reach them in the garage because appliances are in the way. Which leads me to another thought, this will probably be the last batch of beer I brew in this house. We are moving shortly. I'm not THAT sad. Just a little. More nostalgic I suppose.

Anyhow here are the ingredients:

Water is Crystal Geyser. No other salts will be added. I don't plan to perform any pH adjustments. I don't plan to measure the pH.

10lbs golden promise
1lb C10
2oz Saaz 2.8%AA at 60 mins
2packets of Saflager w-34/70. Instructions are to sprinkle in wort. So I will. Dates on them are 04/2023. I have no plans to oxygenate the wort.

I'm hoping to speed run this as I have plans to hang with Kevin tonight for a movie. I'd like to be done by 5pm. We'll see how close I get and what corners I'm willing to cut.

12:04 - I'm boiling water now to calibrate the thermometers. It was hard getting all the equipment out. The appliances are butted up against the shelves where homebrew gear is stored. It sucks too much. This will be the last brew until we move. I was crawling in the metal shelving to get to things.

12:44 - We are mashed in at 150F. While mashing I'll clean the keg and fermentation chamber.

1:01 - Junny had asked me to store cold packs in the chest freezer. I didn't think it was a good idea at the time. I told her that it's not freezing in there, the packs will just be gooey oozy stuff. She asked to do it anyway. I try to be nice and I agree to this reluctantly. Those packs have been leaking ever since. The liquid found its way onto the paper towel I put beneath the keg to catch the tiny drops of beer when I pour some out. I can't describe the enormously large colony of mold and bacteria that grew there because there are no words. It was soooo gross. I did my best to clean it up. I wouldn't be surprised if I got sick in the next few days. I'll probably never brew good beer in there again. Thanks Junny. I've washed my hands twice now. I'm going for a third right after I get done typing this.

2:51 - 20 mins left to go in the boil. I may run out of propane. If I do, then I will just cool the wort and move on with life. Since I had a free minute, I did go and get the whirlfloc and yeast nutrient. I noticed that my spray bottle is broken so I can't spray things to kill bad bugs. Also, I'm retiring the old fermenter. It's day is done. I'm moving on to a new one that I've had for about a year now.

One thing that I've been thinking about today is that the hose I use smells very chemically. Maybe that's a reason the beer is coming out bad. I'll see if I can replace it before the next brew session.

4:22 - All done for the day. It went smooth. Gravity is 1.050. It tasted good going into the fermenter. Since I needed to get the wort cooled to lager temperatures I had to use a lot of water. I usually put the water in the washing machine but I figured there would be too much water. So I used a bucket and put it in the washing machine. When it filled I emptied it outside. So 20 gallons or so went outside instead of within the washing machine. There were towels in the washing machine. Ellie didn't tell me. She often forgets about towels in the washing machine and they get all moldy smelling. I don't know why it seems that she forgets when it's towels. After the brew day was over, I started of the washing machine and I'll be sure to finish up the laundry for her. I also ran out of ice. So I had to use all the ice within our freezer. I hope the freezer makes enough ice for the family by the time they get home. Anyhow, I'm off to see Kevin. He had heart surgery recently so I thought I'd give him some love.

Buster's Brown Clone

I roped the brew club into making a clone of Bravery's Buster's Brown. Brian Avery sent over a skeleton of the ingredients and let us fill in the details. This is my attempt at said ingredients:

12 lbs 2 row
8oz C40
6oz cara-pils
8oz white wheat malt
4oz chocolate malt

2oz Magnum
2oz Northern Brewer
2oz Cascade

2 packets of US-05

I'll add the Northern Brewer with 10mins to go and Cascade at flame out.

For a water profile I'm going to add the following to distilled (which I got from ezwatercalculator.com):
Mash:
4g CaSO4
2g CaCl2
1g MgSO4

Sparge:
4g CaSO4
2g CaCl2
1g MgSO4

This should yield the following:
77ppm Ca
5ppm Mg
0ppm Na
51ppm Cl
134ppm SO4

With a pH of 5.6

1.5mL of Lactic Acid should get us down to a pH of 5.5

We mashed in a little high. Around 158. I got it down to 154-156. The pH measured 5.4. So, I will not add any acid.

OG will be 1.064. A little high. The wort tasted bitter. I went with 1.5oz of magnum and 1.5oz of Northern Brewer. Glad I did that. All in all it was a very ho hum boring brew day. Here's to hoping the beer comes out tasty.

Club SMASH beer

 Th club thought it would be fun to do a SMASH beer. I don't remember what grain or hops we landed on but I know I've got 15# of the grain. I think I will try to make beer fast.

I didn't calibrate the thermometers. I've crushed the grain just now and am heating up the strike water. I bought Crystal Geyser water. 

9:57 - All mashed in. I'm going to wait an hour. I'll clean the keg and when I'm done, I will sparge. Mash temp is about 150F. I went a little high and added some cool water. About 1/4 of a gallon bu that was too much so I added some hot strike water. It initially looked a little thick and now looks like what I'm used to seeing. I probably added about 5 gallons. I also added a little acid to the mash. How much? I don't know. Did it need it? I don't know.

10:36 - It was a 30min mash. I'm sparging now. Just ran off the first as fast as I could. Then poured 3 gallons of cold water in, stirred 

12:15 - All done. I'm guessing it rook 2.5 hours. Maybe 3. The OG will be 1.056. It tasted ok going into the fermenter. Other than that it was a boring day. Will all the short cuts spoil the beer. We will see how it comes out.

Some other things I did, I added the hops, whirlfloc, and yeast nutrient to the kettle just before I ran off the sparge. I used the immersion chiller. I thought it would clean up quicker.

A Hefe

So I entered the AHA competition. Seemed like the thing to do to set an example in the homebrew club. I'm not sure where I got this recipe. I may have made it up. I may have grabbed it from somewhere. I don't know. I'm pretty sure part of it is just old un-used yeast. So way to go me for using fresh ingredients. Gotta put your best foot forward.

5lbs Maris Otter
5lbs Pale Wheat
1lb Dark Munich

1oz Hallertau Mittelfruh 4% AA

2x SafAle WB-06

Distilled water with the following salts in the mash:
3g gypsum
1g salt
4g CaCl

Some quick math tells me that I need two packets of yeast. Thankfully I got 2. What I need to do it take 10 times the weight of wort during cooling to re-hydrate. That would be 220ml. So, hopefully I don't forget. 

It's 1pm as I type this and I still have to get to the store and calibrate thermometers and all that. So it could be a while before I'm actually boiling things.

3:13pm - We are now heating the strike water. I've measured out the salts. I've calibrated the thermometers and the pH meter. Grain has been milled. So far everything is going smooth.

3:38 - I've mashed in. Mash temp is 150 which is exactly what I was after. So that's awesome. The pH came in at 5.1 which is a little low but not tragic. I'll assemble the brew kettle next. So far everything is going very smooth.

4:20 - Heating up the sparge water now. I've assembled the boil kettle, cleaned the fermentation chamber, and made some cider. I entered that into the NHC as well. I didn't put much effort into that. I put in a some all spice, nutmeg, and cloves in a 1 gallon fermenter, apple cider, and yeast. I did add a little yeast nutrient.  How much of each spice? You know, just a little sprinkle. What yeast? WLP 775. I will say the expiration date was two days ago.I give this an extreme low chance of turning out good. This is where my life is.

5:20 - We are well into the boil now. The first gravity reading I got was 1.040. Things are going well. Bugsy has been in and out of here all afternoon. 

7:04 - Done. OG will be 1.052. It tasted really good. I went with the old fashioned copper coil for heat exchange today. I stirred like hell and I think it cooled faster than the plate chiller. I'm going to move to this method from now on. This was one of the most easy, pleasant brew days I've ever had. Not sure why. Days like this make me want to brew more.

Dunkles Club Brew

 The guys thought it would be fun to brew a dunkle. Ok. We got the bearded brewer to ship me the ingredients and I kitted it up for the boys. The recipe is from an old BYO article.

10lbs Weyermann Dark Munich Malt
4oz Melanoidin malt
4oz Carafa II

2oz Tettnanger Hops 3.4% AA

Saflager W-34/70. This is a dry yeast. Bearded brewer recommended switching to dry. Let's try it out. I don't think we need to hit it with O2. Dry yeast doesn't need it.

2:30 - I had to build up the new propane burner. I'm really dragging today. Like most days now. Kids keep me from sleeping well. I'm about to measure out the salts for today. I'm going with:

8g - CaCO3 (Chalk)
4g - CaCl
2g - Epsom

3:45 - I don't know why everything is so slow today. I've calibrated my thermometers. Put together the mash tun and the boil kettle. I'm heating up strike water now. I'm going to try for 152F for the mash today. The new burner smells bad.

4:53 - Heating up sparge water. We hit our first snag of the day when it appears that the batteries of the pH meter are dead and it takes coin cell batteries. Second thing came up and that was when I went to clean the keg, there was no PBW. I remembered then that I was out. And I just ordered stuff from MoreBeer. I guess that's how life is. I'm now using OxyClean for the keg. We will see how well it works.

6:02 - Well into the boil now. I've cleaned the mash tun. Made a mess. Got the rig a little wet with wort. So it should be sticky later when I try to move it. I added about a pound of DME to the wort to get the gravity to where I think it will be 1.050. I was really struggling with this for some reason. I would take a sample, add wort and then the gravity number was smaller which is impossible. Eventually I used the pipette to grab wort and sample it. When I was though I got a sample of 1.040 which should be right. I usually pick up 0.010 in the boil. I don't know why suddenly I'm missing my gravities by sooo much. I brew so seldom now I can't find the time to figure it out. It's just what it is at this point. I've now moved beer ingredients to the fridge in the back yard. I'm hoping this will allow the serving fridge to air out.

8:15 - All done. O.G will be over 1.050. I was worried at first since the hydrometer measured in at 1.040 but then I realized I took it straight from the kettle which was still hot. So I probably added a little too much DME but it tasted a little bit bitter when I sampled it so maybe it will all balance out. I ran out of ice. Luckily there was enough in the freezer. I got the plate chiller to cool the wort down to 62ish. That works since I can slowly walk the beer down to 55 over the next day or so. Bugsy came in to "help" me clean. I asked him to stay in the garage or he would have to leave. That was bouncing off the walls hard and couldn't "control his body" as his former teachers used to say. Eventually he left the garage one too many times and dad kicked him out. Not so sad since he was hungry anyway.

Anyway that ends the day. I need PBW. Maybe I'll add in something to clear up the cider I'm thinking of making. I picked some up at the store while I was getting water and ice. I'm thinking of returning Gavin's bottle with some.

AHA Big Brew

Well, I've installed myself as the president of a brew club in town. Not because I want to be president of something but because I want a brew club and I know what I want it to look like. So I started one and am doing me best to mold it into that image. My hope is that in a year or so, the club will be taken over by someone more eager and I will get to enjoy culture I established until I die. Anyhow I digress...One thing I wanted for the club was to have an internal homebrew competition and I planned to do it in the fall during a yearly festival. Covid struck and as such we can no longer meet at Flight Line Tap Room (our new home). One thing I thought might bring us together would be to brew together but separately. The AHA Big Brew was May 2nd and the thinking was that we were going to get together to brew until the pandemic arrived. So I thought we could combine these two events and brew the AHA recipe as a club and use that as our internal homebrew competition. We thought we could reach out to our local homebrew shop 100 miles away and throw him some business. The recipe was strange and the ingredients hard to get to Dylan did best to substitute and put together a big ass order and had it shipped to me. I kitted these up and had the guys come over the Friday before and we all sort of brewed together but separate that weekend. Except I have kids. And I need time when they are away to brew. So I picked this Friday since I thought that FedEx would deliver my MoreBeer order which contained a new burner since the old was leaking on Thursday, which they did not. So brew bother Jacob hooked me up with a burner. That's a lot of catching up of my brewing world right there. Ok, here's the recipe:

 50.0     6.00 lbs. Maris Otter                   Great Britain  1.038      4
 41.7     5.00 lbs. Pilsener                      Germany        1.038      2
  8.3     1.00 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt                      1.033      2

  1.00 oz.    Chinook                           Pellet  13.00  49.7  60 min.
  0.50 oz.    El Dorado                         Pellet  15.00  14.2  15 min.
  1.00 oz.    Samba                             Pellet  11.60   0.0  0 min.
  0.50 oz.    El Dorado                         Pellet  15.00   0.0  0 min.
  1.00 oz.    Cashmere                          Pellet   9.60   0.0  Dry Hop
  1.00 oz.    El Dorado                         Pellet  15.00   0.0  Dry Hop
  1.00 oz.    Samba                             Pellet  11.60   0.0  Dry Hop

Lallemand Voss Kveik

We will be using distilled water with the following additions to the mash:
10g gypsum
1g epsom salt
1g NaCl
2g Calcium Chloride

We will try to measure the pH but I don't think any of the pH meters will be accurate right now. I have plans to add 1g of lactic to the mash to drop the pH to 5.4. I was going to measure and see then decide if I add it. It may just be a bust and I will have to add anyway.

Junny wants to have the spent grain for baking so I need to remember not to throw things away.

1:45 - It's late. I'm going to be still brewing by the time the kids get back and I feel bad about it. I'm going to have to find a way to make it up to the women. Anyhow, I've boiled the O2 stone, calibrated the thermometers, calibrated the refractometer, measured out my salts, assembled the mash tun, moved around the garage a bit, measured out the acid, calibrated the pH meter (it seems to be working great), and I'm sure other things. I need to heat up my strike water and grind the grain.

2:27 - I've just mashed in. I wanted a lower mash temp since I thought the Cara-Pils would be enough to give the brew body. Lowering the mash temp would also yield more ethanol. So that's nice. Initially the mash was too hot so I added some cool water. And I added too much and ended up about 147. Not tragic though. Next I measured the pH and got 5.0. That's a little low. I wanted 5.4 so this was off by quite a bit. I'm not sure if the brew calculator is off, if I used it wrong, or if I measured wrong. In any case, I am NOT adding additional acid. I did sprinkle a little 5.2 stabilizer in there hoping it would bring it up but that was a fail. I did nothing. So I guess we have what we have, don't we.

3:24 - Draining the last of the wort now. It doesn't taste as sweet as I was hoping. Pre-boil gravity is 1.040 and it should be 1.050. So this beer is a big big miss.

4:24 - Something that I did that maaaay disqualify me from the contest is that I held back on the early hop additions. Since I didn't hit my gravity I didn't have the malt backbone for so much hops. So added about 3/4. Almost done with the boil now.

5:23 - Ok I've cooled the wort and pitched the yeast. This yeast likes to be warm I guess so I'm putting it in my closet. Something I didn't pay attention to was that the yeast wants to be hydrated first before pitching. I noticed the direction on the packet as I was about to cut it open. So I go into the dishwasher and get the glass measuring cup and pour 100ml of water into it. The cup was warm from just having got out of the dishwasher and the water was warm because it was sitting in the garage. The packet indicated 30C so I think I got the temp covered. I forgot to sanitize the cup but it shouldn't be too bad it just came out of the dishwasher. The big screw up was the water. It was the water I was drinking. So all my mouth germs are now in the beer. Soooo, this beer is going to be awful. I guess I had a fun day though. I'm going to clean up now and I think I will clean the kegs while I am at it.

5:45 - O.G will be 1.050. Way off. I wanted 1.060 which I usually get. Was it because I mashed too cool. I don't know. I tasted the sample of wort that I took for the gravity measurement and it was awful. Tasted like burnt rubber.