Helles II update

Tried the Helles a couple of days ago. It's good. The fermentation went really well. I fermented at 52-50F for almost three weeks. Then I raised the temp to 60F for a diacetyl rest for two days. Then I transferred it to a keg to lager it.

I've read two methods for lagering. The first says to get it to around 34-33F and the other says to get it -10F from fermentation. The last time I made the Helles I lagered it at 33F. This time I went with the -10F method. I don't really think it matters.

Let me just say that the Mexican Lager yeast is super clean. Just like I remember at White Labs. It gave off a sulfur odor during fermentation just like the WLP830 did but there is no DMS in the final product. The Helles from last year had a sulfur type quality to it when I began to lager it and it went away slowly as it lagered. It took a month before it was almost undetectable. I could detect it because once I got a mouthful of that the first time it seemed like I was hypersensitive to it. Which leads me to a flaw detection theory that I will get to in a sec here. The Mexican yeast produced a lager that was drinkable right after the three weeks were over. In fact I can hardly tell a difference between it now and when I kegged it.

The beer itself came out around 6.2% ABV (finished at 1.011) which is a little high for a Helles. I will shoot for 4.5% in the future. It's not bitter. Maybe a little too sweet. Although I'm not sure if that is a perceived sweetness due to the amount of alcohol. It has a nice malty character to it. It has almost no hop smell. But the most interesting part of this beer is the character the Noble hop added to the brew. I don't think I was supposed to have a large bitter addition of Hallertau Mittelfruh. I think it supposed to be added to a 4.5% beer. When we add enough for a 6.2% beer then we get a real floral, citrusy, almost tart character. Because I added too much it will be easy now for me to identify Hallertau Mittelfruh when I encounter it in the future. Which leads me to this next little bit of personal tidbit...

It seems to me that when I want to learn what something in the beverage smells/tastes like what I need to do is have some over-exposure to it. Once that happens, I then become sensitive to it. Now I am sure I can detect Hallertau Mittelfruh again when used in beer at reasonable levels. Because of my last Helles, I can detect even minuet amounts of DMS. Because I made that danky red a while back, I know what oak is going to taste like even in small amounts.

Ok. Gotta go. Claresta came with her boy and gave me beer. It's nap time now.
 

Helles II

My first lager was a helles and I loved it. For some reason around this time every year I get a hankering for an all malt clean lager. So I thought we would give it another go. This time with Mexican Lager yeast. I was able to try this yeast at White Labs when I visited their place and I really like it.

Recipe:
10 lbs pilsner
1 lb munich
1.5 oz Hallertau Mittelfruh
WLP940 - Mexican Lager x2 with starter - Lot Number CHI887-88-89-90 - Date June 20, 2013
Whirlfloc
Servomyces

50% ridgecrest water
50% distilled
3 grams gypsum
3 gram calcium chloride
1 gram epsom salt
3 gram canning salt

Water break down:

It is Sunday. I made a starter Friday night. This is the longest I've let a starter go. We'll see if it makes a difference. I hope to mash at 150F. I hope to get a gravity of 1.050.

Also got a new fun thing to try today. FermCapS. It should keep the wort from foaming over. 3 drops per gallon. So if I have 6 gallons of wort that it is 18 or so drops. I measured this to be about what the eye dropper holds.

11:04 - I've measured out the brewing salts.

11:59 - We have doughed int. Did I mention Ellie was with me today? She helped clean the hopper from the mill and stir up the mash. Doughed in high on purpose. Enough of this undershoot crap. We were about 10F higher than I wanted. So I just got some cool water and poured it in a little at a  time as she stirred. We got it to about 151F. I'll call that a victory.

Also did I mention we got great news on Friday. Ellie had her 1 year CT scan. It was actually day 422 since the procedure and it came up clean. We are so happy it hurts!

1:04 - All is going well. I just finished sparging. Final running OG was 1.032. I batch sparged. Preboil gravity is 1.042. I heated up water to about 190F and added one and a half gallons, stirred it up and ran it off. Then I added 4 gallons of 175F water stirred it up, left it for 5 mins, and ran it off. I vorloufed each of those runnings.

1:15 - All the wort in the kettle and we are heating it up. I added 18 drops of FermCap. Let's see if it works.

2:28 - Everything is really ho-hum right now. All is going well. No issues. Got about 30 mins left in the boil. I thought I'd boil for 90mins today to drive off as much sulfur from the pilsner as possible. The FermCap worked really well. There was still a little hot break but not enough to create a boil over. Will use it every time now.

I added the hops 60min from flameout and gave Ellie a sample. She is not a hop fan but I thought she might like to try one of the noble hops. It is not as bitter and mean as the ones we typically use. It's very pleasant and as I type this it is filling the air with the wonderful aroma. She found it agreeable. So that was cool. I've found lots of time to clean stuff. Cleaned two kegs, the chest fridge, and the mash tun.

I think Rachel will be by after work to pick up the spent grain for Nat's family.

3:55 - Again a boring day so far. Ellie just helped me cool the wort to 65F. I will let it set for 10 min for the cold break to settle to the bottom. Probably only get 2F more in cooling. I've put the yeast in the chest freezer which is now set to 50F to cool it a little from 75F or so room temp that the starter was at to something closer to the 50F I plan to ferment at. The idea is that I get the wort to 63F and the starter is about that as well when I pitch. Then into the chest freezer which is at 50F and hopefully the thermal mass of the wort/beer will be such that it cools slowly.

4:05 - I just sampled the wort. The hydrometer says 1.060. Way higher than the 1.050 I was after. It will be a little sweet and boozy. I guess that's good if you want to get laid. The sample tasted REALLY good. I can't wait to drink this beer. I'm sad I have to wait 6+ weeks to do it.

5:30 - All done. The only hiccup was that the rubber stopper doesn't fit into the glass carboy. Need a smaller stopper. No problem. Just used the top I use for a blow off and set myself up as though I was expecting a blow off. Going to kiss the wife!!!

Split Batch Air Lock Results

So the results of the split batch were definitive. The batch with the silicon air lock created a much more estery beer. It tasted like a fruit bomb. To me it tasted like an apple cider mixed with beer. Some of the girls really liked it. The batch with the traditional bubble air lock came out way less estery. Ellie found that she liked the two to be mixed so I pour her half of one and half of another when she was up to drinking some.

I like clean beer so I think I will switch to a low or zero pressure head space method during fermentation in the future. Maybe it's time to try brewing in a open container????

EKA IV

Today I plan to do a split batch and have one fermenter with the silicon cap and the other with an air lock. I have a theory that the silicon cap is putting CO2 pressure on the beer and it is stressing the yeast. We will make EKA with a little less base grain.

9 lbs 2-row
1 lb Munich
0.5 lb Wheat

0.4oz Magnum 10.6 AA






WLP001 x2 - Jun-27-13, Lot PTI44-13

Servomyces
Whilfloc

5 gallons Ridgecrest filtered water
5 gallons distilled
4 grams gypsum
4 grams calcium chloride
1 gram epsom salt

1:06pm - Well into the brew day now. We are mashing now. Everything has gone smoothly. I've invited Kevin. He may get here later. It's a warm day for this time of year. It's nice. I've set up the gate so that snickers can hang with me. She seems to be happy.

Mashing at 150F. I hit a little high. Just added some room temp water. No problem.

Kevin came over. He brought Bud Black. That new Amber from the kit. It was good.

Ok. To sum up. Made a couple of mistakes. First I forgot to prepare the dry yeast for the beer. So as the beer was cooling I scrambled to get water boiled up with the mason jar. I did that and then got in it in the freezer to cool a little. Then I figured it would be better to throw it in the pre-chiller. This will be a good idea in the future. But, then I forgot to nicely warm up the dry yeast. So I fetch it from the fridge and put it under my arm pit to warm it up. This can't be good but I figure let's roll with it. After I get the water to 100F and put the yeast in I remember that I bought WLP001 from the bearded brewer.

So now I've got cold yeast in the fridge, and rehydrated yeast that I don't know what to do with. So I get the WLP001 from the fridge (two vials, one for each fermemter) and try to warm them up. In the meantime I am cooling wort with Kevin. I get the bright idea to use the dry yeast for mead. So I get Ellie to warm up the honey and put it in one of the one gallon fermenters. She didn't mix it so I had ot do that for her. After that she pitched the yeast and I told her to put in an orange and some raisins which she did. We'll see how mead that hasn't had any heat treatment at all turns out. I did sanitize the fermenter and the funnel.

So now the day is done. Aside from the yeast screw up, all went well. The two fermenters are chilling in the bathtub. It is a little warm for this time of year so it might be a challenge to keep it cool. The mead is there too. I think I may open the bathroom window at night and close it during the day.

EKA III Update

Getting real close on the EKA to what I want. The last batch ended at 1.007 which was one of the lowest it has been. I like it a little dry. The new usage of dry yeast I think is going to be a permanent stay. I will say that I think the ferment ended up with less esters but they are still there. At this point they are mild and almost pleasant but it irks me that it shouldn't be there at all.

During a trip to Big Bear with the wife we listened to The Brewing Network and on some random day back on 2009 a caller called into the show and shared how his beer suffered from strange ferments when he used the silicon stopper. I have been using the silicon stopper for months now. Simply because I'm too lazy to be bothered with filling the air lock every couple of days or whatever. Anyhow I guess the pressure builds up in the head space and angers the yeast. I can confirm that a fair bit of pressure does build up. I think it is time for another split batch with nothing different other than a stopper vs. airlock. My hope is the reason for the esters is that I've been stressing the yeast under too much pressure.

Redish Beer

So I saw some email traffic about the homebrewing locals getting together again. Red beer was the one we will muster up with. So I tried to make one. It turned out a little more brown/amber then red. Here's the breakdown:

12lbs 2row
8oz munich
8oz rye
1lb flaked wheat
1lb Crystal 75L
2oz Black roasted barley

.75oz Northern Brewer @60mins
1oz Columbus @1min
2oz Columbus dry hop

WLP028 Edinburgh x2 - Apr-12-13 - Lot CCB755-762

whirlfloc
servomyces

French Oak chips which will be added after primary fermentation for 7-10 days. I'll add it the last week in the fermenter before I transfer to the keg.

Water breakdown:

 

Let me start by saying I was trying to make a beer I saw on MoreBeer that looked interesting. They called it Fire in the Hole.I would have bought the Fire in the Hole kit but they were unavailable. So I thought I'd just by the ingredients myself separately and I quickly learned why the kit was unavailable. The recipe called for Carafa II which they were out of. This is key since it adds the color to the beer without the acrid/roasty/coffee type flavors. I think this is because they remove the husks. Since I couldn't find it I substituted in the black roasted barley. Also, they didn't have any Magnum hops that the recipe call for in bittering. I've still got some Northern Brewer in the freezer so this wasn't a problem.

Dad was coming over to brew with me. Before he got there I measured out the hops and the brewing salts and got the water ready. Got the O2 stone boiled. Got the mash tun together.

In some sort of bizzaro type brew day from the last time, we had a hell of a tough brew day initially, then things got smooth and boring. It started with me adding the brewing salts to the brew water. It then looked very cloudy and the chalk settled on the bottom. Afterwards I do some google fu and learned that you don't add chalk to the brew water, you add it to the mash because it needs the low pH to actually dissolve. So there was that screw up.

Then I thought it would be cool to show dad the grain mill. I get the grains in the hopper and the drill hooked up and start milling and something happened that never happened before. As soon as I started the drill, the mill flew off the bucket and emptied the hopper full of grains onto the garage floor. Half of this ended up under the dryer. So dad lifted the dryer and I did my best to gather up all the grain from the garage floor. So now the grain is a nice mix of rye, barley, and lint/dirt/bugs/whatever from the garage floor. This might sound gross but it's really not a big deal since the mash will filter almost all of that out and even if something does get through it will be boiled for an hour so life goes on. But still what a pain in the ass.

I've lost that cool key used to tighten and loosen drill bits from the drill. So I tighten it but turning on the drill and letting it torque down onto the mill and tighten up. We ran all the grain through the mill and then focused on the strike water. I'll get back to that screw up. So now it comes to getting the drill off of the mill and I can't seem to do it with a pair of pilers and my strong as an ox dad grabs the neck that tightens/loosens the bit and turns the drill on. I'm sure it will break his wrist but instead it just burns up the AC motor on the drill and we end up with a lovely electrical burned smell in the garage for a few minutes.

So we get the strike water into the mash tun and I swear we hit the 168F we wanted. So I go to take the mill off of the bucket and I look at the grain. What do I see? Not a single grain has been crushed. That's right kiddies, if you run the mill in reverse the grains will get shifted to the sides of the rollers and pass through the mill completely uncrushed. So now I've to get the smelly drill back out and get it attached to the mill but I can't since when dad ran the thing in reverse the open the drill bit he jammed it. So, I have to get him to do the same thing he did to burn up the drill the first time only this time in reverse. After we get through that, I mill the grain in the correct direction and all is well. It now made sense to me why the mill jumped off the bucket the first time. When it spin in the wrong direction the force torques the mill off the bucket. When done right, it would torque down onto the bucket and spillage. So we do a better job getting the drill off the mill when done. All we needed was a little practice I guess.

Ok so now we get the grain in the mash tun and the temp is 148F. Too low. And why should it go right? Nothing has yet anyway. So we pull out some grain and boil it up and add it back into the mash to raise the temp. I got about +2F. Then I pulled out about three times as much grain as I did the first go around and boiled it and added it back. At that point I was at 156F and we left it.

So at this point things start to go smoother. It's like we exercised all of the bad brewing demons in that first hour or so. We heated up the sparge water and did a batch sparge. We got about 7 gallons and the pre-boil gravity was 1.048. We boiled for an hour and during the last minute I added the columbus hops. This is my first time with these hops and as soon as I opened it smelled it I was floored. I've been used a lot of citrusy type hops lately (cascade, amarillo, citra). I found this hop to be pungent, dank, and earthy. Very interesting odor.

Then we set our minds to cooling the wort and it took about 45 mins to cool. I had dad stirring the wort while I stirred the prechiller. That led us to about 2:30ish and mom was hungry and took him away. I left the wort for a few minutes for the cold break to settle. Then I racked it over and hit it with O2 for a minute and pitched the yeast. It now sits in the chest freezer. The OG is 1.062.

All that was left at that point was to cleanup. Next time I brew I will brew with the brown dog. She sneaked out of the house and into the garage for a minute to hang with mom, dad, and me. It was nice to see her there. At least this time our brewing adventures did not necessitate a major cleanup of the garage like last time. 

Elf King Ale III

Just ran out of the Zythos IPA. Time to make more beer. If you really want to be a good brewer, brew the same beer 5 times I've heard. This will be the fourth of this blonde ale. Well I guess 6th if you count the two Spike Ales. Anyhow, of note this time around I will not have a flavour/aroma hop addition and I'm using dry yeast. Also this is the first blonde ale I will use water I have built. Here's the breakdown:

10 lbs 2-row
1 lb Munich
0.5 lb Wheat

0.5oz Northern Brewer 10.6 AA

Safale US-05 11.5g - Dated 06/13 - Lot# 72202 179 1535

Servomyces
Whilfloc

5 gallons Ridgecrest filtered water
5 gallons distilled
4 grams gypsum
4 grams calcium chloride
1 gram epsom salt

10:15 - I've already measured out the hops and brewing salts. I've also boiled water for the yeast to re-hydrate in. That water is now cooling in a mason jar that I boiled with the water. I used tap water. I am now boiling the O2 stone in distilled water. It's the best way to sanitize since it is hard for the sanitization solution to get into the pores. Once I get done boiling I usually just put it right into sanitization solution and leave it until I'm ready to use it.

11:20 - Moving along well. The strike water is now heating up. I've tasted the water and it is good. Here's a screen grab of what the water chem came to.

 

Mash tun is ready to go. Grains have been crushed. Ellie was here to see the mill and I think she thought is was cool. I seem to have lost my drill key. Got to go to Home Depot and get a replacement. Also, I need to got on with cleaning some stuff. It seems in my drunken stupor last brew session I didn't clean the gear as good as I should have.

11:55 - Just doughed in. Wanted to hit 150F. Looks like I did. Also looks like the pH came in around 5.2 on its own so no 5.2 will be used. Got the brew kettle soaking along with some hoses. I think I'll leave it for another 30mins or so.

12:50 - Heating up the sparge water. Went inside for bit to hang with Ellie. That was nice. Then I came out and cleaned some stuff. In a minute I'll begin the sparge. So far all is well.

1:39 - Sparge done. Now heating up the wort. On a whim I decided to do more of a continuous sparge today. I heated up the sparge water to 190F and then put 1+ gallons in and stirred up the mash. Then I did the vorlouf and started the first runnings. I don't know why but 10mins or so later I slowly put more water in the mash tun. And then I was like, screw it, let's do this. I got a very good extraction of sugar. The gravity of the last of the runnings was 1.015, the lowest I've ever had. The pre-boil gravity was 1.040. I should hit 1.050 no problem. Also, I tasted the grain and it was the least sweet it's ever been. Go team Avery!

2:06 - The 60min count down has begun. All is going well. Just added the hops.

4:03 - Man the wheels fell off quick. I got the pump circulating the wort and the hose flung out and started pumping hot wort all over the garage. So, it's going to take a long time to clean the garage. Then things just got worse. I tried to use dry yeast. So I warmed the water in the majon jar by putting it in the stove until it was 100F. Then I added the yeast. I left it for a while then went to swirl it around and it spilled everywhere. Since I spilled a crap ton of beer on the floor there was not enough in the fermenter. And then I smashed my finger when putting the propane tank back and it hurt like hell. Then after I moved the fermenter to the bathroom to ferment I realize I forgot to put the yeast in. Now I remember I forgot to take a gravity reading. I'm in a bad mood. I've got to get to cleaning now.

5:16 - Ok. Measured OG was 1.052. Done cleaning. In addition to the usual cleaning process I hosed and mopped the floor. I hope I got all the sticky. Time will tell. Also, my shoes got real sticky. I hosed them off too. I hope the beer is ok. From all the crap of me touching the brew as it was cooling I hope I won't get an infection. If we do I guess it would be kind of fun. We can have a new party game to see who can drink the awful beer the fastest or something like that.

Avery out!