I bought the ingredients for an Amber Ale back when it was 100 degrees every day. So, a while ago. I haven't brewed a whole lot lately. I guess there is always something going on. I've had to purchase more yeast since the first purchase of yeast actually got too old. It been so long I don't even know what the grain bill was. I've just got a bag a grain. I do remember getting inspiration from the Brewing Classic Styles on the shelf. I also remember we didn't have the hops we wanted. So, I grabbed some substitutes. Below is the best guess I have for the gain bill and hops.
8lbs 2row
1.25lbs Munich
1lb C40
0.5lb Victory
2oz Pale Chocolate (200L)
0.5oz German Magnum 12.4% 60min
0.5oz German Magnum 12.4% 15min
1oz German Northern Brewer 9.6% 1min
And that takes us to the yeast. For the yeast I chose the steam yeast. I made a starter over a week ago. Then I put it into the fridge until now. I guess we'll see if that matters at all. I just pulled it out of the fridge and decanted the beer on top and swirled up the rest. It's right now next to me, warming up.
WLP810 - Dec 31 2015 - Lot 1019471
WLP810 - Oct 3 2015 - Lot 1016663
That last date it right. Sue me! Also, we are using Crystal Geyser water.
12:50 - I've got ice and water. I've boiled the O2 stone. I've calibrated the thermometer and the hydrometer. I think we are ready to begin. It's been a long time since I've brewed. I hope I remember.
1:37 - Had some problems with the mill. It wouldn't move any grain through. I think I need to take it apart later and figure out what is going on. Going to dough in now.
3:49 - Well into the boil now. Pre-boil gravity was 1.040. A little lower than I had planned. So I held off on the bittering hops a little. Other than that things seem to be going well.
5:40 - All done. OG is 1.050. It tastes bitter. So I think I screwed that up. I also managed to keg the Jacob split batch. It is cooling and carbing now.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Apple wine
A couple of weeks ago I decided to try and make some apple wine. I bought some apple juice from the store. It was pasteurized. That's it. Nothing else added. I got two gallons.
The idea was to freeze condense the juice to make a more concentrated juice. I've made apple cider in the past but it comes out too tart and dry. I've tried to halt fermentation by chilling the cider to 35F once I reach the desired sweetness. That only slows the fermentation process down. It doesn't stop it. So you get what you want for a couple of weeks.
I took the two gallons and put them in two, one gallon pitchers and put them in the freezer. After about six hours the water began to freeze. After that every hour or so I would pull the pitcher out and scoop out the ice and then put the pitcher back in the freezer. At the end of the day I took what was left (a little less than a gallon) and boiled it for 10 mins. I added some holiday spices and put it in a one gallon fermenter.
It now sits in Ellie's closet. I'll report back when I taste it.
The idea was to freeze condense the juice to make a more concentrated juice. I've made apple cider in the past but it comes out too tart and dry. I've tried to halt fermentation by chilling the cider to 35F once I reach the desired sweetness. That only slows the fermentation process down. It doesn't stop it. So you get what you want for a couple of weeks.
I took the two gallons and put them in two, one gallon pitchers and put them in the freezer. After about six hours the water began to freeze. After that every hour or so I would pull the pitcher out and scoop out the ice and then put the pitcher back in the freezer. At the end of the day I took what was left (a little less than a gallon) and boiled it for 10 mins. I added some holiday spices and put it in a one gallon fermenter.
It now sits in Ellie's closet. I'll report back when I taste it.
Friday, May 1, 2015
O2 pitch rate results
All three are really cold right now. They taste about the same. They were carbonated in the bottle. I'm guessing they could have used another week of carbonation. They don't taste too estery right now. Any of them. They were pretty bad when I bottled them. I think they may get worse when they warm up.
They are warming up now. They still all taste the same and they taste sort of neutral. No apple esters. WTF is going on here? I added priming sugar and that fixes everything? Maybe the small fermentation in the bottle cleaned things up a little more?
Well they do taste better to more O2 they have but it seems very minor. They are fully warm now. No huge esters. They don't taste great but not bad either. Also, they all taste very similar.
Mrs. Avery tasted them warm and noticed they were bitter. I think she is right about that. She liked the shaked bottle best. She didn't notice any esters either.
They are warming up now. They still all taste the same and they taste sort of neutral. No apple esters. WTF is going on here? I added priming sugar and that fixes everything? Maybe the small fermentation in the bottle cleaned things up a little more?
Well they do taste better to more O2 they have but it seems very minor. They are fully warm now. No huge esters. They don't taste great but not bad either. Also, they all taste very similar.
Mrs. Avery tasted them warm and noticed they were bitter. I think she is right about that. She liked the shaked bottle best. She didn't notice any esters either.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Session Helles
I really enjoy Helles. Simple. Tasty. There is kinda a new homebrew community standing up. We are supposed to deliver a session beer. So I'm coming in with a simple Helles.
8lbs german pilsner
2oz Hallertau 2.7%
Crystal Gyser water
Whilfloc
Servomyces
WLP940 x2 with starter. One of them was old. Date = 7-10-15 Lot# 1014141. Date = 4-17-15 Lot #1011907.
11:07 - It's a Sunday. I'm hoping to get all the mash run off before dad calls for lunch. We are currently mashing right now. 150F. It's going ok so far. The mash tun is leaking a little. No big deal. While we mash I boiling to O2 stone. The gas tank is finicky and it sucks but we got is to work.
12:14 - Sparge done. The plan today was to sparge and then go to lunch dad, then start the boil. So now I'm waiting for my family to call. They should any moment. Things are going well so far. Once I got the sparge water heated up I put it in the mash tun. Then I looked at the clock. It was at 50 minutes instead of my usual 60. It probably won't matter. Most starch is converted within 45 minutes anyway.
5:43 - Done. Went to food with mom and dad. That part of the day worked out ok. During chilling a fly buzzed into the beer. I was livid. It will probably be ok but I'm losing my mind about this. I only got one bag of ice for a lager beer. Note to self, in the future you need two bags of ice. I had to raid our freezer but I got it chilled. It appears the beer is now at 58 degrees. I was hoping for more like 52 when we went to the fermentation fridge but again we should be ok. If anything it means less of a change/shock to the yeast when I pitched them in. I'm going to set the fermentation temp to around 51F. The OG was 1.044 so that part workout good. The starter smelled good. The sink is leaking and Ellie got Ricky to come over and fix it. I am not a handy man. But I am a hungry man. There is chicken in the fridge.
8lbs german pilsner
2oz Hallertau 2.7%
Crystal Gyser water
Whilfloc
Servomyces
WLP940 x2 with starter. One of them was old. Date = 7-10-15 Lot# 1014141. Date = 4-17-15 Lot #1011907.
11:07 - It's a Sunday. I'm hoping to get all the mash run off before dad calls for lunch. We are currently mashing right now. 150F. It's going ok so far. The mash tun is leaking a little. No big deal. While we mash I boiling to O2 stone. The gas tank is finicky and it sucks but we got is to work.
12:14 - Sparge done. The plan today was to sparge and then go to lunch dad, then start the boil. So now I'm waiting for my family to call. They should any moment. Things are going well so far. Once I got the sparge water heated up I put it in the mash tun. Then I looked at the clock. It was at 50 minutes instead of my usual 60. It probably won't matter. Most starch is converted within 45 minutes anyway.
5:43 - Done. Went to food with mom and dad. That part of the day worked out ok. During chilling a fly buzzed into the beer. I was livid. It will probably be ok but I'm losing my mind about this. I only got one bag of ice for a lager beer. Note to self, in the future you need two bags of ice. I had to raid our freezer but I got it chilled. It appears the beer is now at 58 degrees. I was hoping for more like 52 when we went to the fermentation fridge but again we should be ok. If anything it means less of a change/shock to the yeast when I pitched them in. I'm going to set the fermentation temp to around 51F. The OG was 1.044 so that part workout good. The starter smelled good. The sink is leaking and Ellie got Ricky to come over and fix it. I am not a handy man. But I am a hungry man. There is chicken in the fridge.
Brew brother Jacob split batch update
Just sampled both the beers that Jacob and I brewed. They tasted very similar. Appley. Not too bad though. Ellie tasted the same. From this I can conclude that the issue is not my fermentation. It's not my cool fermentation chamber. It's not a dirty fermenter. It's not the keg. Can't wait to do a repeat with him at his place on his gear.
As a side note. I'm not sure it's my gear either. My O2 experiment is on going. I just bottled up beer that was fermented with very little of my gear. I used malt extract and brewed it in the kitchen with kitchen equipment. It's probably not in the O2 stone since the shake batch was the same. The funnel was recently replaced. I just don't know what it could be. There is one constant in all this and that's the WLP001 yeast. Maybe that yeast is just not as clean as the world says. I don't know.
As a side note. I'm not sure it's my gear either. My O2 experiment is on going. I just bottled up beer that was fermented with very little of my gear. I used malt extract and brewed it in the kitchen with kitchen equipment. It's probably not in the O2 stone since the shake batch was the same. The funnel was recently replaced. I just don't know what it could be. There is one constant in all this and that's the WLP001 yeast. Maybe that yeast is just not as clean as the world says. I don't know.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Blonde Ale O2 test
I'm going to make a small batch of extract beer to test the ester production of beer at various O2 rates. I got some malt extract, some German hops, and some WLP001. I'm in the kitchen now trying to boil it up. I'll check the gravity and log it here but the important thing will be home much O2 I add just before the pitch. I've got to think of a good way to introduce the yeast in but other than that this should be an easy brew day.
Ultra light malt extract - about 2 lbs.
Hallertau Mittelfruh - 1/2 oz.
WLP001 - April 20, 2015, Lot 1011789
Crystal Gyser water - 2 gallons
OG was 1.048. I had a boil over when I went to get the door for the dogs. That sucked. But other than that all went well. I shook one for 20 secs. I O2 one for 20 secs. I O2 one for 60secs. That last one was labeled 90 secs. I tried to re-label it but the pen was done. The boys are all here so fun is being had.
Ultra light malt extract - about 2 lbs.
Hallertau Mittelfruh - 1/2 oz.
WLP001 - April 20, 2015, Lot 1011789
Crystal Gyser water - 2 gallons
OG was 1.048. I had a boil over when I went to get the door for the dogs. That sucked. But other than that all went well. I shook one for 20 secs. I O2 one for 20 secs. I O2 one for 60secs. That last one was labeled 90 secs. I tried to re-label it but the pen was done. The boys are all here so fun is being had.
Scottish 80 Wins Honarable Mention
The most recent Scottish 80 didn't seem that good to me. Ellie thought it was great so I figured that I would show her. I entered into the Slurp and Burp beer competition in Portland just to get judges feedback. I bottled up three bottles. One of them was meant for me to drink with the scorer sheets since they usually want two bottles but in this case they wanted three so I sent them all. One of them was a really shitty pour from the keg too.
I was hanging with Ellie in Palm Spring when I checked the results and saw that I got an Honarable Mention. I take that to mean that my beer scored well but not well enough to get a medal. My overall score was 41.5 and I was judged by two judges. Pretty cool! I guess Mrs. Avery does know something after all. The boys are on their way over drink some of it. Which is good. Cause that beer is shit. I still don't like it.
If I can figure out how to embed the PDF results sheet I'll do that below:
I was hanging with Ellie in Palm Spring when I checked the results and saw that I got an Honarable Mention. I take that to mean that my beer scored well but not well enough to get a medal. My overall score was 41.5 and I was judged by two judges. Pretty cool! I guess Mrs. Avery does know something after all. The boys are on their way over drink some of it. Which is good. Cause that beer is shit. I still don't like it.
If I can figure out how to embed the PDF results sheet I'll do that below:
Split Batch with Jacob initial results
Jacob kegged his beer a week ago and it has been on the fridge since. I kegged mine a few days ago. Mine seemed a little more estery but not much. He said his fermented a little cold. I think the keg shook up on the way over to me since there was a ton of yeast in the beer. I've noticed that as the beer brightens up the esters really come out. Mine was certainly brighter than his and if the temp cannot account for the difference in ester perhaps the yeast would. Also, he felt that the week in the keg helped ease up on the esters. He said it smelled like apple juice when we went to keg it which is exactly what it usually smells like. All in all I predict in a few weeks they will both taste the same and they will both be equally estery.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Split Batch with Jacob
So now that Jacob is in town I'm going to try to run down my ester problem. I plan to make split the batch and have him ferment and serve up his half and then we compare. If they are different I know it is a fermentation/kegging issues. If they are the same then we will split the process some other way and go from there. We will be making EKA.
8lbs 2row
0.5lbs C15
1oz Hallertau Mittelfruh 2.7% AA
WLP001 x1 with starter. 4-03-15 Lot 1012260
Crystal Gyser Spring water
Whirlfloc
Servomyces
9:52 - Boiling the O2 stone now. So far all is going well.
11:12 - Heating up sparge water now. All is going well. The ball valves all smelled good. Hit the mash temp at 152F. Uneventful. The Clacobs are out there hanging with us.
2:02 - The wort is moved to the fermenters. The yeast is pitched. I showed off the brewing nerd box. We get to clean up now. Everything went really well.
2:40 - All done. Feels like the fastest brew day ever. OG is 1.047. Jacob has since gone. Clare took him away. I feel that the goal has been accomplished and now we will see what will become of the two brews. No only that, there were multiple people to witness this so we can all brainstorm about variables depending on what happens.
8lbs 2row
0.5lbs C15
1oz Hallertau Mittelfruh 2.7% AA
WLP001 x1 with starter. 4-03-15 Lot 1012260
Crystal Gyser Spring water
Whirlfloc
Servomyces
9:52 - Boiling the O2 stone now. So far all is going well.
11:12 - Heating up sparge water now. All is going well. The ball valves all smelled good. Hit the mash temp at 152F. Uneventful. The Clacobs are out there hanging with us.
2:02 - The wort is moved to the fermenters. The yeast is pitched. I showed off the brewing nerd box. We get to clean up now. Everything went really well.
2:40 - All done. Feels like the fastest brew day ever. OG is 1.047. Jacob has since gone. Clare took him away. I feel that the goal has been accomplished and now we will see what will become of the two brews. No only that, there were multiple people to witness this so we can all brainstorm about variables depending on what happens.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Scottish 80 - Part2
The best beer I've made in recent memory was a Scottish 80. So I'm making it again. The original brew day post was here http://shanebrewblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/scottish-7080.html.
7 lbs British Pale Malt.
0.5 lbs Munich.
1.0 lbs Crystal 40L
0.5 lbs Honey Malt
0.25 lbs Crystal 120L
3.0oz Pale Chocolate 200L
UK Kent Goldings 0.75oz 5.7%AA
WLP002 x1 Date: 3-19-15 Lot: 1012737 with a 2 cup starter.
Whirlfloc
Servomyces
50% RC water
50% Distilled
These brewing salts:
We are shooting for a mash of 158F.
2:37pm - We've had a kind of soft start today. I'm taking my time getting going. I've boiled some ball valves and the O2 stone. Cleaned some stuff. That's about it. Watching football all the while. When this next game is over I will really get after it.
4:05pm - All ready a screw up. I'm cleaning more gear. I think I'm getting an infection from the ball valves which is then making its way into the other equipment. So I'm cleaning a lot of stuff. And I'm trying to multitask. I plan to use one of the glass fermenters because I think the plastic ones maybe infected. So I transferred a bunch of PWB water from the basin to a glass fermenter via a siphon. It was slow so I went inside to do something else and forgot about it. So there is now a few gallons of water on the floor in the garage. Whoops! Anyhow, football game over. Seahawks beat Packers in overtime to go the Super Bowl. So I guess we will get started now.
I've measured out the brew salts, malt, hops, and ground up the grain. Now I will get the strike water heated up while I get the mash tun together.
4:57 - All mashed in. Was going for 158F. Nailed it! I had some problems getting the mash tun to not leak. I thought I was screwed for a second because I thought I had run out of plumbers tape. But, I found some in the drawer and was able to keep it from leaking.
8:51 - All done. Nothing bad happened. OG was 1.050. Way more than I was expecting. Why? I think I sparged with hotter water. This is good to note. I heated up to 180 for the initial sparge and then made sure is was 170 for the second. I'm glad I didn't throw out the remainder of the hops from the 1oz. The recipe called for 0.75oz initially. After I saw the pre-boil gravity of 1.040 I knew we were in trouble. Actually when I tasted the sparge runoff and gave it to Ellie to try I knew. It tasted way too sweet. Anyhow, because I didn't throw out the rest of the hops I added a little more. I can't say how much. Not the rest of the ounce. I just took a guess. The sample at the end of the brew didn't taste too bitter so I think I did ok. Ellie sampled it at the end of the brew and liked it too.
Also, Ellie spent most of the time out there with me. We just hung out. It was nice husband and wife time.
7 lbs British Pale Malt.
0.5 lbs Munich.
1.0 lbs Crystal 40L
0.5 lbs Honey Malt
0.25 lbs Crystal 120L
3.0oz Pale Chocolate 200L
UK Kent Goldings 0.75oz 5.7%AA
WLP002 x1 Date: 3-19-15 Lot: 1012737 with a 2 cup starter.
Whirlfloc
Servomyces
50% RC water
50% Distilled
These brewing salts:
We are shooting for a mash of 158F.
2:37pm - We've had a kind of soft start today. I'm taking my time getting going. I've boiled some ball valves and the O2 stone. Cleaned some stuff. That's about it. Watching football all the while. When this next game is over I will really get after it.
4:05pm - All ready a screw up. I'm cleaning more gear. I think I'm getting an infection from the ball valves which is then making its way into the other equipment. So I'm cleaning a lot of stuff. And I'm trying to multitask. I plan to use one of the glass fermenters because I think the plastic ones maybe infected. So I transferred a bunch of PWB water from the basin to a glass fermenter via a siphon. It was slow so I went inside to do something else and forgot about it. So there is now a few gallons of water on the floor in the garage. Whoops! Anyhow, football game over. Seahawks beat Packers in overtime to go the Super Bowl. So I guess we will get started now.
I've measured out the brew salts, malt, hops, and ground up the grain. Now I will get the strike water heated up while I get the mash tun together.
4:57 - All mashed in. Was going for 158F. Nailed it! I had some problems getting the mash tun to not leak. I thought I was screwed for a second because I thought I had run out of plumbers tape. But, I found some in the drawer and was able to keep it from leaking.
8:51 - All done. Nothing bad happened. OG was 1.050. Way more than I was expecting. Why? I think I sparged with hotter water. This is good to note. I heated up to 180 for the initial sparge and then made sure is was 170 for the second. I'm glad I didn't throw out the remainder of the hops from the 1oz. The recipe called for 0.75oz initially. After I saw the pre-boil gravity of 1.040 I knew we were in trouble. Actually when I tasted the sparge runoff and gave it to Ellie to try I knew. It tasted way too sweet. Anyhow, because I didn't throw out the rest of the hops I added a little more. I can't say how much. Not the rest of the ounce. I just took a guess. The sample at the end of the brew didn't taste too bitter so I think I did ok. Ellie sampled it at the end of the brew and liked it too.
Also, Ellie spent most of the time out there with me. We just hung out. It was nice husband and wife time.
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