Upgrades

"Upgrayedd gonna kill me!" Great quote from a great movie. I have some ideas of projects to improve the beer.

First idea: Upgrade the stir plate. The stir plate works but has issues. First off the badass magnet is not properly on the motor. So the stir bar is not balanced. This is an easy fix. The harder fix is the issue that as the yeast grows and sugar is consumed, the viscosity of the fluid changes. This means that when I set the stir plate to spin at the rate I want, it will eventually stop spinning all together. What I need is a control loop.

This shouldn't be too hard. There is quite a bit of clearance below the fan. In it I can place an emitter/detector pair. Then I paint part of the fan white and I can use a microcontroller to count the white stripes I see and I can change the PWM to spin the fan faster or slower. This requires a solid state relay to PWM the motor. I've got one of these. I've got emitter/detectors. I've got microcontrollers, voltage regulators, etc. I've got all I need to do this right now. What I don't got is a display of some kind and an interface to change the rate of spin if I want. But I'm sure I don't need that. I may just hard code the rate in and call it good.

Second idea: Upgrade the cooling method. Right now my method of cooling is not logistically ideal. It takes two people and it sucks. I need an easier way. I need another pump to do this though and those things are like $200 but I think it will be worth it. What we will do is after the flame is out we will start the whirlpool with the current motor right on the burner. Then we get a bucket of ice water and use the second pump to pump ice water through the chiller. The water from the chiller will go back to the bucket. So, it will be a closed system. But, the water will heat up quickly so the majority of the work will be to add more ice and empty the excess water from the bucket. This will keep us from having to move the hot pot and wort to the basin. It should cool VERY quickly though. Aside from the pump I will need the tubing, connectors, coupling, and ball valves to control flow.

Third idea: Temperature control. The latest brown ale showed me an issue with my current system. I set the temp with the temp controller. However, that is not going to be the temp in the chest freezer. After the cold temp is reached the freezer is turned off but the cooling coils are still very cold and so the temp in the freezer continues to drop. All I really care about is the temp of the beer. I am lucky in that the thermal mass of beer won't allow it to fluctuate all that much. As long as the temp in the freezer is some kind of average and doesn't swing TOO much all should be well. But what temp should I set on the controller to get the beer the temp I want? Well it changes with the temp of the garage. I sort of have to play games and tweak the temp constantly. And then there is the issue that the beer itself is sometimes exothermic and sometimes not. The beer actually produces heat when aggressively fermenting the first few days. So I need to tweak the temp controller even more so and it is even more so of a guessing game and more so of a nightmare.

Well last night I read about a thermowell. This is a fermentation cap with a build it metal tube that extends well into the beer. We can put a temp sensor down the thermowell and can measure the actual temp of the beer. Then I get a computer to control the cooling cycles on the chest freezer to finely control the temp of the beer even when fermenting. I can even wire up the controller to a wireless device and have it output the temp of the chest freezer and the beer for the last days or weeks. Again, I think I can scrounge up the digital stuff.

Fourth idea: I'd like to put a nice wood collar on the current chest freezer. I will use the current temp controller for this since I don't need fine temp control. It just needs to keep the beer cool when it is served. This nice collar should allow us to add nice tap handles. I will never need to open the fridge again to serve beer. Only to replace the kegs. There are lots of examples of how to do this on youtube and it looks like a long weekend project.

Fifth idea: New chest freezer for fermenting. This would use the new cooling system and would allow us to ferment beer in one freezer and serve it from another. It should be big enough to fit two fermenters.

That's all I've got for now. Long post. My fingers are tired!

Ellie's Brown Ale

So here I am making beer for Ellie's beer party. We thought we would throw a party to raise money for her race in Ireland. I was thinking about what beers to make and I thought a brown ale and a wheat beer. Those are beers she likes. So we will start with Janet's Brown Ale. It was a brown ale I've made and we really liked. I've changed the recipe slightly. I thought there was too much coffee notes in the beer so I backed off a little on the chocolate malt. Could find some of the hops so I made a substitution. Not sure which yeast I used the first time but this time we are using WLP002 English.

Here's the ingredients:
12lbs 2-Row domestice
1lb White Wheat.
1lb 4oz Crystal 40L
7oz Chocolate malt (Tasty had this at 8oz)

2oz Northern Brewer 10.6%AA @60min
1oz Northern Brewer 10.6%AA @15min
1.5oz Cascade 6.2%AA @10min
1.5oz Cascade 6.2%AA @1min
2oz Columbus 15.2AA drop hop (was Centennial. Could find it at brew shop)

WLP002 - Aug-18-12 - Lot # 1002PBLSKYA1

Whirfloc @10min
Servomyces @10min

Dad was supposed to come by but wasn't feeling well. We rode with us to COH yesterday. I know it dorks up his back. He know it does too which is why he travels with pain killers. He didn't use any on the trip. I know he was hurting. But it's cool. That means that Ellie and I get to hang.

Made a starter last night. All went well with that.

Woke up this morning, ran, ate, went to store to get water, ice, and propane.

10:00am: Started cleaning.

12:30pm: Heating strike water. Wanna get a mash of 154-155F. It should be nice and malty.

12:54pm: Mashed in. Mash temp 154F. Hit it. Awesome!! Added 5.2. Half a tablespoon this time. I'm thinking I'll never need as much buffer power as they provide for the worst case with a full tablespoon. Mash tun leaking a little. Not too bad though. Just put the pitcher underneath. Should be fine.

1:17pm: Started to clean the keg. E bought a gate so Snickers can brew with papa. It looks bad ass. I've got to get that dog a brewer's assistant shirt now.

1:40pm: Heating sparge water. Hanging with Ellie.

2:56pm: Sparged. Didn't get out very much sugar. A little sad. I wanted to get 1.055ish and got 1.047ish. So I added some DME until I got to 1.055. I added a little at a time and then checked. The only thing I can think of was that the second sparge temp was low and it didn't dissolve the sugars as well as it should have. So note to self, get the sparge up to 170F.

Tuey came over. We drank beer and he helped out a ton. The beer OG is 1.069 which is where is should be. i'm glad I added the DME. Looks like I did that part right.

The boil and such went well. The cooling did not. I really need to think more about a more efficient way to move the thing over to the basin, get the pump primed, and cool the wort. Tuey was assigned to hold the pump but it got too hot. The pump needs to to be below the spigot and we put it on the mash table and it worked. Getting ice water through the heat exchanger is not easy. The whole system I got going is awkward and clumsy and it seems I always run out of ice. I really need to think harder about the process.

It's really hot in the garage. Hot and humid. Got to get inside now.

100 Day Pale Ale Notes

The 100 Day Pale Ale started out way too bitter. Kevin and I must have added too much hops after the boil over. We drank some after two weeks when I moved it to the keg. The next week I gave Kevin a  growler and he said it was good and that his wife liked it too. I called BS.

Later in the week I invited over Kevin and Poole to empty the keg since I wanted to get ready for Ellie's beer party and I need the space in the chest freezer. Kevin brought two growlers and Jonathon took one. Then five of us worked through at least a half gallon of what was left. It wasn't bad. The bitterness had calmed down and the citra was beginning to come through. It smelled great. Love that new yeast. It may become EKA new yeast.

So, the keg is empty and I'm working a couple of new beers to raise money for Ellie. Wish us luck.