Malty Brown

I've decided to make some beer that is not EKA. So how about some brown beer? I grabbed this from the More Beer site. The goal here is to go easy on the O2. Maybe 10 secs.

I went to the pitch rate calculator and hammered in the details of this brew. I have two vials and no starter. The date on the White Labs vials are Feb 24, 2014. Some googling shows that White Labs yeast was made four months before the date. So that means my yeast was made Oct 24 which give a viability of 75%. Assuming each vial started with 100 billion cells that gives me 75 billion in each vial for a total of 150 billion. A 1.055 beer, 5 gallons, with a pitch rate of 0.75 million cells per mL per degree plato means I need 193 million cells ideally.

Now normally I've been overpitching which leads to me to wonder if that is why I'm having over O2 problems. The yeast don't need that O2 to propagate. So it's more like poison. Since this is an underpitch I will provide some O2. I'm going to do about 10 secs.

Another note is that Brew Brother Jacob saw some horrific shit on the internet about dirty ball valves. So I decided to clean mine. They were is bitch to get open. I've tried before but gave up. Because I am weak minded I suppose. But life is too short to give up on your dreams and I had a dream to open that fucking ball valve. So I bought an extra wrench at walmart that gave the power of GreySkull when used and I He-Maned the fuck up and opened that ball valve. I assure you. God damn I write some beautiful prose sometimes.And there were dirty no doubt. Could that have been my issue all along. I guess we'll see.

Here the ingredients:
9lbs 2-row
1lb Munich
8oz Caravienne
8oz Abbey
8oz Carapils
8oz Crystal 60L
4oz Chocolate

1oz Northern Brewer at 60min 7.8%AA
1oz Kent Goldings at 10min 5.7%AA
1oz Kent Goldings at 1min 5.7%AA

Crystal Geyser water
Whirlfloc
Servomyces

WLP002 x2 - Feb 24, 2015 - Lot # 1011820 (no starter)

1:45 - I'm trying to get this done by 5:30. We have a birthday party to attend. So I'm speeding some stuff up. Thus, I didn't make water. I tried to boil the O2 stone while I heated up the strike water. Success!! That saved 10-15 mins. I also did a few other things in parallel that bought me 10mins or so. So far I feel I'm ahead of schedule. I think I will cheat on the mash time too. Usually 60mins. I think we will try 50mins. My hope is that once everything is cooled down Ellie will help me pour the wort into the fermenter and that will save a few minutes too. Mash temp is 156F. Hit it right off the bat first try. That never happens. That saved like 5-10 minutes too.

4:57 - Done. Time challenge completed. I win!! Beer OG is 1.052. A little low. But I cut corners when drawing the wort off so I expected it. The wort tasted a little bitter and little roasty. In my opinion a little too roasty for a brown ale. But I'm looking forward to drinking it. Ellie is taking me to a party now.

Blonde Ale Tasting Notes

So the last few batches have been a blonde ale with no O2 stone, blonde ale with 20sec O2, and a blonde ale with 30sec O2 and not in a chest freezer.

I poured all three last night and tasted them side by side. The first had a banana/bubble gum taste still to it. If I didn't know any better I'd say this was a Belgian beer. It was a dry yeast packet if I remember right. The second two tasted the same. They tasted pretty clean. Not too much easters. I would like to note that the second of the two did taste eastery a couple of weeks ago and has cleaned up a little.

So it would appear that O2 was the culprit this whole time. It also would appear that the chest freezer adds some easters, but not much. Although, since I added 30sec of O2 instead of 20sec, this may be the issue.

I think the next experiment then becomes how much is the ideal amount of O2 to put into my blonde ale. Since it is in volumes, I'm going to need to do the experiment 5 gallons at a time.

I'm relieved to have figured some of this out. I was beginning to get discouraged. Also, I think I should make some to drink once in a while. Instead of beer for the sake of making better beer later.