Fruit Helles

So I won best in show at the home-brew competition and get to brew beer with Transplants. I mentioned that I could brew a home-brewed version of the agreed upon beer that we could sample and talk about and they seemed receptive of that so here it goes.

The base recipe for this will be the Helles recipe from the Brewing Classic Styles book.

9lbs pilsner

0.75lbs munich

0.25lbs melanoidin

Hallertau 3.8%AA @60min

Whirlfloc

WLP830 x2 - MFG Jun 20, 2017 - LOT# 1039785

Now I had wanted WLP838 because it's the most sulfury but the Bearded Brewer didn't carry it because...it's a little too sulfury. So we went with WLP830. Another thing I did here that I've never done was to step it up twice. I made two starters for this yeast over the course of a week. I left it on the stir plate for 48 hours, then put it in the fridge for 48 hours to drop the yeast out of suspension, decanted, added fresh wort and left it for 48 hours, and now its been in the fridge for 48 hours. Dylan recommended a two step for lagers. Also, I felt that the yeast was a little old and I didn't have the cell count for one starter.

I'm forgoing yeast nutrient. There is data indicating that it contributes to esters. In a delicate beer like this I want to suppress those as much as I can.

As far as water goes I plan to use a very soft water profile. Found a link here from braukaiser that lots of forms link to for a Helles water profile. I'm going to add 3g epsom and 3g CaCl to 10 gallons of distilled. This should give me Ca: 22  Mg: 8  Na: 0  Cl: 39  SO4: 31  HCO: 0 (units are mg/L). Even with this soft water I still won't have enough acid in the grains to get the pH down so I will add 3g lactic acid. This should get me to a pH of 5.3. We will see.

As fas as the fruit goes, I asked the brewers at Transplants what they use for fruit and they said purees. Ok. So I got some fruit puree. Shout out to the Bearded Brewer for a quick get on that. I have four purees; apricot, plum, peach, and sweet cherry. I was recommended a pound per gallon so I guess we'll go with that. I plan to split the batch into 5, one gallon secondary fermenters. One for each fruit and one of just a plain Helles. I like Helles, so that's for me. After a couple weeks in secondary I will bottle condition them and take on over to Transplants for tasting.

11:30 - Boiling O2 stone now. I'll calibrate the steel thermometer while I'm at it. I'm thinking I should get another steel thermometer to verify/backup the other one. Come to think of it, I should get two. Cause what if one reads different that the other. Then what do you do? How do you know which one is right.

12:04 - Got the brew salts all measured out. Along with the lactic acid. I calibrated the pH meter and then tragedy struck. I went to pull out a trash bag from the overhead cabinet above the dryer. You know, where I've staged everything up until now. Once I pulled out a trash bag, the whole roll came with it and crashed upon the staged ingredients. The lactic acid spilled out. So I had to clean that up as best I could and will need to remeasure. But the largest tragedy was that the glass that put the O2 stone in fell over and broke. I'm going to re-boil the stone to kill the germs. But I broke the glass. Streak broken. 15 years and not a glass broke in this house by me. I can't throw that in anybody's face anymore.

1:08 - Mashed in at 150F. We started a little high which way easier to fix that too low. Took a little time to get down there but we're ok. The pH at dough in was 5.35. After the 3g of lactic was are at 5.1. So we are a little low there but I read data suggesting the lower the better for esters. This brew day has been slow for some reason. All kinds of little things going wrong. The crusher gave me grief. One roller got stuck/jammed. The ball valve on one of the kettles started leaking. I had to stop and take it apart and put it back together. Such is life.

2:17 - Mash went well. Pre-boil is 1.037ish. We should get 1.047 post boil. That's right in style. So there's something that went well. 90 minute boil now.

3:22 - Cleaned a keg. Cleaned the fermentation chamber. Cleaned the mash tun. Cleaned...you get the idea.

5:42 - Brew day done. I had issues cooling the beer down. I used the immersion chiller and ran ice water through it. But for some reason after 60F the temp just would not drop. I got it down to 58F before getting it in the fermentation chamber. I'll slowly lower the temp over the next 24 hours down to 50F. Other than that everything seemed to go ok. The OG will be 1.052 which is a little higher than I thought it would be but that was after a 90 minute boil so I guess that makes sense. Anyhow, it's in the hands of the beer gods now.

Best In Show!!

How about that! I got an email from Corey at Transplants telling me that the stout won best in show. My immediate thought was "why didn't the dunkel win?" The blonde placed third in category. I still have no idea how they actually scored since I have yet to get the score sheets back. 

The coolest thing about winning is that I get to make a beer with Transplants. My first thought was to make a Scottish 80 but that got shot down real fast as something that won't sell. So I thought Helles would probably sell and threw that out. I remember Tastey McDole talking about fruit beer and indicated that stone fruit went real well with light lagers due to the sulfur complementing the stone fruit. So I threw that out there and Transplants got on board. It will be their first lager. I'm happy they were willing to do something different for them with me. Looking forward to it!!!

Decocted Dunkelweizen

Probably the last item on the 'ol brewing bucket list is a decoction beer. The last beer I intend to enter in the home brewing competition is a Dunkelweizen. And I thought why not decoct it.

Recipe is from brewing classic styles:

2lbs Pilsner

7lbs Wheat

3lbs Munich

6oz Special B

6oz Crystal 40

2oz Carafa Special II

Mittelfruh 1oz 4.0% AA @60mins

WLP351 x2 - Lot# 1035263 - MFG: Feb 22, 2017

Servomyces

Whirlfloc

I'm reading that Dunkelweizens traditionally were a softer water beer. So we I've targeted the Decarbonated Munich profile on the Brewer's friend calculator.

Here will be our brewing salts that we will add to 10 gallons of distilled water:

2g Chalk (CaCO3)

2g Gypsum (CaSO4)

4g Calcium Chloride (CaCl2)

2g Epsom Salt (MgSO4)

1g Salt (NaCl)

Planned Decoction procedure:

1. Dough in at 122-125F for a protein rest. Rest for 15mins. I'm going to assume the water should be around 130F.

2. Pull off 12 quarts of thick mash and get to it about 150F. Let the thick mash sit for 15mins.

3. Then boil the thick mash for 20mins.

4. Add that thick mash back to the thin until temp reaches 148F. We may have some thick mash left over. That's ok.

5. Let this mash sit for 15mins.

6. Pull off 6 quarts of thick mash and boil for 20mins.

7. Add the thick mash back to the mash tun until we have reached about 158F.

8. Let this mash sit for 15mins.

9. Pull thin mash from the tun and boil it.

10. Add it back to the mash tun for mash out. Let sit as long as needed to warm up sparge water.

11. Sparge as normal.

12:57 - I'm getting a later start than I would have wanted but whatever. It's a hobby not a job. Let's relax and let it happen. I've measured out the brewing salts and the grain. I'm boiling the O2 stone now. When that's over I'm going to the store for ice and water. I think I'll also do a propane tank switch while I'm there.

1:29 - Forgot the propane tank. Such is life.

2:08 - Heating up the initial water now. The first big surprise here is the amount of water we use. Much more then my usual batch sparge method. Beer Smith says 25.8 quarts which seems outrageous to me but when I check another source it seems correct. So for my 12lbs of grain I will be using a little over 6 gallons of water. Wow!

2:20 - Protein rest is now at 128F. Beer Smith says to hold here for 35mins. I assume that's 35 mins total. First off that's a little high so we will keep the lid open. Second, if I perform steps 2 and 3 right now that would be about 35 mins. I still have to assemble the boil kettle.

2:45 - Beer Smith says to pull off 8.3 quarts of mash. Brewing TV has led me to believe 12. So I split the difference and pulled 10. I got Ellie to stir while we heated it up to 150F and we will let it sit for 10mins. Ellie noted "it's thick." That's right it is.

3:17 - Didn't get quite enough mash. We are at 145F now so we missed by a little bit. I'll be sure to pull off more the next go around. I'll pull 6 quarts. Brewing TV wins. Beer Smith loses.

3:54 - Ok I pulled off 6 quarts and when I put it all back in the temp was 152F. So we missed pretty big there. Life goes on.

4:54 - Sparging. We got a stuck mash. So that sucks. The mash is running really slow. I guess I'm just going to go and wait it out. The mash grains looks like mud now it't now wonder that it's stuck. Lesson learned I guess.

5:21 - Second half of the sparge went much better. Pre-boil gravity is 1.055. Seems a little high.

6:41 - We are going with the old immersion chiller today. I want to get to 62F and I'm not sure I can get there with the plate chiller. So I got all the tubing out to be sure that it would work and came up one with one connection that wouldn't fit in the chiller. I went on a scavenger hunt in the brewery looking for the mating connector and found it. Luck! See sometimes things do work out.

The mash ending up looking like mud when I went to get out of the mash tun. No wonder it got stuck. Below is a pic of the thick mash as we boiled it. It was really cool to see it gelatinize. 

Here's the mash tun when I got all done. Not sure if shows up well here but it looked like mud.

8:00 - Trying something new today. I'm going to remove the chiller after we are done chilling and then whirlpool it. That should make all the hops and proteins gather in the middle. It will take an extra 10 mins but I think it may be worth it. So I'm whirl pooling it now. The OG will be 1.066 and I took a sip of the sample and it is without a doubt, the best wort I've ever had. It could be because it's mostly wheat malt and high gravity at that. I'm not sure. But maybe, just maybe, there is something to this decoction thing after all.

8:37 - Done for the day. I started around 11:30 today. That makes this a 9 hour brew day. I'm going to go ahead and say that it was the longest ever. Well now at least I can scratch decoction off of the bucket list. I'm not sure if I'd ever do it again. If the beer is amazing maybe. Otherwise it just takes too long.

Special thanks goes out to my wife Ellie. She helped me decoct the beer. We took turns stirring and she kept me company. And made me some food. And looked after the baby (he is a handful). I know she reads these so I just wanted her to know that I appreciate her. Love you boo!!!

805 Clone

The second of three beers to be entered in the brewing competition is an 805 clone. I grabbed the recipe from the internets.

9lbs 2-row
0.75lbs Honey Malt
0.75lbs Torrified Wheat

1oz Willamette 4.7%AA @60mins
2oz Willamette 4.7%AA @5mins

WLP 002 x2 MFG: Apr 18, 2017 LOT#: 1037085

servomyces
whirlfloc

Distilled water with the following additions in the mash only:
2g Gypsum
6g Calcium Chloride
2g Epsom Salt
2g Canning Salt
3g Lactic acid

So I'm trying something new today. I'm adding the brewing salts to the mash only. I will then sparge with distilled. I'll be sure to measure the pH of the mash and sparge to be sure that we are still at an acceptable range.

11:25 - Just mashed in. Had some trouble with the ball valve. Once it was all put together and I put the strike water in, it started to leak. I had to empty the mash tun and then tighten it up. It may be time to replace the plastic in them.

No problems today with the crusher.

Once I added the grain and salts I measured the pH and it measured in at 5.2 (which is what I want). But I already measured out the lactic so I said what the hell and added it anyway. The mash now measures 5.08. We'll see if it matters. I intend to sparge with just distilled so we will see what the final pH is after all is said and done.

1:14 - Things are going well. Mom and Dad rolled in with Bugsy so I halted for a little bit to say hi them and feed baby a little. Sparge pH was well under 5.6 (I think it was 5.35) and the final pH before I started heating up the wort was 5.25. We will see how that all comes out. The pre-boil gravity is 1.036 which means I should have a 1.046 beer. My mash scooper is starting to break. Perhaps I should get a new one. I'm about 10 minutes into the boil now.

3:52 - All done. Things went ok. The beer ended up with a gravity of 1.045. It got cooled to 73F which is higher than I would have wanted. The plate chiller makes it rough to know what temp we are dialed in for. There is an inline thermometer from more beer that tells you the temp of the beer on it's way out of the chiller. I think I need to get that for the next brew. Also, I have no idea how to cool wort to lager temps using the plate chiller. Regardless, the wort tasted good and I'm excited to see the results.

Redemption

I don't know why I didn't post this until now but after my horrible brew day I woke up and I decided I was going to brew that beer again. And I was going to do it now. I drove myself to the bearded brewer and got the ingredients. I then heated up some boiling tap water and tried to cool it with the plate chiller via ice water and that seemed to work.

In that new setup I filled the basin with ice water and pumped it into the plate chiller. The beer ended up chilling great. The starting beer temp was around 64F. The gravity was different. It came in at around 1.065 and the previous batch was closer to 1.070. I added three packets of yeast with no starter.

I went to bed that night tired and happy. I haven't sampled the beer yet but I did note that the fermentation didn't seem very aggressive. I heard almost no noise from the airlock like I normally do. I'll keg it tomorrow and we will see how it turned out.

Edit: Kegged this beer today on May 19. Final Gravity was 1.025. The beer was a little more roasty than I was hoping for but it seems ok. I will enter it and we will see. It's not going to win an award but hopefully I get some good feedback.

Oatmeal Milk Stout w/ Therminator

First off the latest EKA turned out ok. Not great. It got entered in the National Homebrew competition so we will see what the world thinks of it. Results come in next week. I will say it had a little bit of apple easters. Not as bad as usual. So I may need an even lower starting pH then what my el cheapo measuring device says. Perhaps I should look into just computing what I should add and go with that. For fun, I think I'll continue to measure mash and pre-ferment pH values. It's just another number to track and check out.

Second off, I think I'm going to make a run at the home-brew competition at the Antelope Valley Fair. I'm thinking to enter three beers. I'm hoping to bring home some hardware so wish me luck.,

Third, got a brewery upgrade. Check it out.



That's a plate chiller. It should chill the beer very quickly. I'll be sure to write up a bunch about that as the brew day goes on since there should be a lot of firsts here.

That takes us to the fourth and final thing, our brew day. Ellie and the baby have left for the March of Dimes in LA and I'm left here home alone. So I've got all the time in the world. The first beer I intend to send to the competition is an Oatmeal Milk Stout. To this day I feel it is the best beer I've ever made. There are so many variables in making beer that is seems impossible to capture lightning in a bottle twice, I tried to re-make mead once. It went awful.

Anyhow here's the particulars:


9.5lbs English 2-row
1lb flaked oats
0.75lbs Chocolate malt
0.75lbs Victory malt
0.5lbs Crystal 75L (they didn't have 80)
0.5lbs Roasted barley

1lb Lactose

2oz East Kent Goldings 4.8%AA


Whirl floc
Servomyces

WLP002 x2 MFG: Mar29 2017 LOT: 1036332 w/ 1 Liter starter (decanted)
I began the starter a day sooner than normal and then put in the fridge the day before brew day. I plan to decant the liquid, add fresh wort, stir and add to fermenter.

2:22 - O2 stone has been boiled. I will measure out the grains now.

3:32 - Measured grains. Calibrated pH sensor. Put mash tun together. Heating up strike water now. I also ground up the grains and had little trouble with the mill. It was as if the one roller rolled but not the other. I picked it up and just moved the other roller a little and then everything was fine. 

3:47 - Mashed in at 156. Was a little high at first. Used some cooler water. Backed up the temp reading with the pH sensor which has a built in temp sensor. The pH measured at 5.45 which is a lot higher than I would have thought. I'll measure it again during the first runnings. Going to see Matt Gross now an deliver a present.

4:52 - Running off now. The pH measured 5.4ish so mashing really has no effect on the pH it would seem. The wort tastes great!

5:05 - Second runnings measures 5.6. I seem to remember EKA second runnings being much higher.

5:27 - Pre-boil gravity is 1.052. The pH is 5.45.

6:30 - 40 mins into the boil now. The silicon tubing was really dirty. So I made up a bucket of PBW and am soaking it in there for a few minutes. I came in to decant the yeast. I've sampled some of what came out of the starter. It tastes like beer. There's definitely some easters and such in there. It doesn't taste good. I wouldn't have more. It does taste similar to my last batch. Maybe the next EKA I should buy three packets and just pitch directly without making a starter.

8:51 - Brew day done. It went badly. The beer is sitting in the fermentation chamber at 88F. The yeast is already in there so it's not like I can just wait until it cools and pitch. Now I'm worried that my chest freezer will be cycling like crazy all night. Not sure what to do. For what it's worth here's a picture of the setup.



You can see I had a prechiller in there. It was meant to chill the water from the tap but it just didn't chill it enough. I think the future looks like pushing ice water through the plate chiller with a pump.

I'm a little down right now as this was meant to be competition beer. I've also never lost a batch pre-fermentation. There's a first for everything I guess. While getting the beer supplies from under the bar sink I found a bottle of wine Ellie's sister left. I think I'm going to go drink that now and then go dump the beer so that the chest freezer compressor isn't on all night.

Edit:
10:51 - I added a crap ton of ice to help the compressor. I got it from the fridge. Which is real bad.

EKA for brewing contest

First off let me start by writing that the pH correction was the trick. Finally, after YEARS, I have found the secret to apple esters and the answer is high pH. I went and purchased a pH meter. It's the Milwaukee MW 102 that the home brewing community should be familiar with. I have no idea how to use it. I will do my best tomorrow to document how I use it. Maybe someone who reads this can educated me.

Brew Brother Jacob put me in for a spot in the big AHA competition. So I figured I will give it a go. Even it I don't make it in to the AHA competition I'll find one somewhere and enter it.

9lb 2 row
1lb C10
2oz Mittlefruh 2.5% AA
WLP001 with starter. MFG: Oct 29, 2016. Lot 1030987
Servomyces
Whirfloc

I'm writing this the night before just to save some time. The starter boiled over and made a mess. That sucked.

I've also targeted a light beer with malty profile for the water. I will start with 10 gallons of distilled and add the following:
2g Gypsum
6g Calcium Chloride
2g Epsom Salt
2g Canning Salt

4:30 - We are well into the brew day now. I've just mashed in at 152F. Nailed it. Beyond the usual things I do for the day I have calibrated my pH meter. To do this I had three styrofoam cups. I poured some 7.01 in one cup, 4.01 in another, and tap water in a third. I rinsed the probe in tap water(this is the first time it has been used and is covered in storage crap) and put it in the 7.01. I then started the calibration process and when it had calibrated for a pH of 7 I rinsed it in the tap water cup and then moved it to the 4.01. When it calibrated to 4 I dunked it in the tap water and took a measurement. What I measured was interesting. It measured 6.3. I know we have hard water here so I confused by this measurement. The probe measured the 7 and 4 solution ok so I don't know what to think about this. I moved on with life. I dumped the pH buffers in the sink in the garage. I poured out the tap water from the the one cup and added in storage solution. I put the probe in that and then went on making beer. After initial dough in I took a sample from the mash tun in a cup and measured it at 5.34. I'm happy with this and will not make any changes right now.

4:43 - The spare water now measures in at about 5.8. I'm adding 2 grams of lactic acid to see what changes that makes.

4:51 - 2 grams of lactic acid to 7.5 gallons of water at a pH of 5.8 turns the water to a pH of 4.0. I was hoping for 5.2. So I over shot it a bit. At this point I have two options. First is to completely replace the spare water. That means I've got to get to the store and buy more distilled water, then I've got to measure out the brewing salts, then I've got to add to correct amount of acid, and then heat it up. That will take hours. Options two is to just roll with it and see what happens. Now that I'm thinking about I suppose another option would be to add some brewing salts with bicarbonates to drop the pH.

5:01 - Ok. I added 2g of calcium carbonate. It now measures 5.15. Nailed it! Haha. Can't wait to see how this turns out.

5:15 - I also have 5.2 stabilizer. I might have been able to use that. For fun, next batch we will use the 5.2 and see how well it works.

9:15 - Beer day over. The pH once all the wort was collected was 5.3. I feel good about that. I've attached a picture below. I've clean the pH probe and stored in the storage solution. I'll need to keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't dry out. That will kill the probe. I forgot to collect my wort sample before I cleaned everything. I went back and had to pull a sample from the fermenter. OG is 1.048 which is right where I wanted. The other interesting thing that happened was that the temp controller didn't appear to connect to the network. I figured this was because we updated the security setting in the house a month or so ago. So it was a big challenge to open up that box and connect a keyboard/mouse dongle and an HDMI so I could update the settings. Got it done though as so far it seems to be working.

Meader, Christmas beer notes

I think the meader actually came out really well given the fact that I put such a poor effort into it. It used old, sketchy honey/agave in the cupboard. Heck the honey was so old it was crystallized. I just threw it all together in a one gallon fermenter and forgot about it. It came out ok. I really think this is the new holiday drink. If I get quality ingredients and temp control it I think it would be really good.

The Christmas beer came out...ok. It has this taste in there I can't quite articulate that I detecting more and more in my beer. Like a carmally type of taste. I might brew again, not sure. The spices didn't really come out well. They were hard to detect.