Infection?

I went to sample the furlough beer. It tasted ok, but noticed a little ester in there. Is it just green beer taste that will clear up in a few days? Maybe. But I think not. I think it will get steadily worse over the coming weeks.

All my beers for a while now are too estery/cidery. What's happening? Why? One key thing I noticed is that it gets worse the older it gets. This led me to do some thinking and I'm now guessing that the issue is an infection. Some type of acetobacter I'm guessing. They work slowly which is why as the days/weeks go by the beer get worse. I wonder if I were to add oxygen to the beer after a few weeks, would it turn into vinegar? There are a couple of ways we can test this.

1. I plan to make a small batch of beer in the kitchen on Saturday. Nothing fancy. Just some DME, water, and a little hops. Once the wort is cooled I will put it two separate 1 liter water bottles. One of these water bottles will not have any of my gear touch it. From the pot to the bottle. Shake it up to add some O2 the old fashion way, add yeast, and done. I'll use ballons with little holes poked in them as air locks. Then, add wort to another 1 liter bottle but use the funnel, O2 stone, and thief (to check gravity). Basically, all the plasticy things I normally use (except the racking cane). Then I put these in the chest freezer for a couple of weeks and sample.

2. The furlough beer will be given O2 after another week and we can see if starts to become vinegar. Of course if the furlough beer is amazing I'll drink it and not experiment with it. I check it again in a week.

My guess is the O2 stone is the culprit. I jam it in the fermenter every time and I have never completely taken it apart to clean it. All it ever gets is a rinse after use and a boil before use. The boil is only the top 3 inches as well. I'm looking to sanitize just the O2 stone itself. I've never put effort into the tubing.

If this test shows that there is an infection the plastic stuff that touches the beer after it has been cooled must be replaced.

Furlough Beer

Clare says we should make a furlough beer. We are DoD employees and we are being furloughed. Ok Clare here we go. I thought I'd try a little rye. Also I think I'd like to try some dry english yeast. We are going to be sure to cool the wort down today to 65F.

Here's a breakdown of the recipe. I'd like to lower the gravity a little too, so less malt.

8 lbs 2-row
0.5 lbs Crystal 15L
0.2 lbs Rye

0.4oz Northern Brewer 10% AA @60min
0.5oz Amarillo 8.4% AA @10min
0.5oz Amarillo 8.4% AA @1min

Lallemand Nottingham 11.5g x2 - Dated 01/2015 - Lot# 1081064V

Servomyces
Whilfloc

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



8:44pm - So I've been at this for a few hours now and all is going ok. Currently I am mashing and should start the sparge in 15 min or so. Two things are different at this point then normal. One is that I used the grain mill cabinet that Ellie's dad made for me. It worked wonderfully. I set the mill on top, a bucket on the bottom, attached the drill, and milled away. I'm defiantly going to need to give him my thanks. Also, I boiled up some tap water for re-hydrating my yeast and it is simmering in a covered pot in the kitchen as I type. Other than that the day has been the same.

Had some problems with hitting my mash temperature today. I did myself a favor and made sure that I got the temp real close before I put the grains in. I'll never make that mistake again. Also, when I did get the grain in, the temp was a little high which is correctable. If it's too low then we normally are screwed. It's nice that I seem to be getting a process down such that even when things don't go perfect the whole brew day is not lost.

12:55am - Whew! All done. I did not cool the wort to 65F as planned. I cooled it to 68F. I just couldn't get it colder than that. I need to change my cooling method. Maybe I'll try an aquarium pump in a bucket of cold water. I don't know. But I bet this beer is as estery as any other batch. Nothing was different like I wanted. I guess we will see. Something I noticed about these blonde beers is that they are drinkable very early and the esters really kick in as the beer cleans up. So, if I really want to drink this batch I guess I could do it early.

I was thinking another way to skit this issue was to just set the fridge at a higher temp, which I have done. It is now at 67F. English yeast doesn't do well any higher in temp than that. In fact the chest freezer was much cooler than 67 more like 60F when I put the beer in. In no time at all the temp had crashed from 70Fish to 66F. So, 3 degrees in just a few minutes. I needed to warm up the freezer so I plugged in a fan and put it in the freezer with the hopes of it pushing the cold air out and pulling warmer garage air in. This worked great and I was able to warm up the fridge to 68F in about 30secs. That's when I noticed the temp strip change back to 68F. There is no way to liquid could cool that fast. This leads me to feel like the temp strip is not as accurate as I have thought. I rely in this temp strip to tell me what is going on in the beer. Maybe I need one of those thermowells.

Anyhow, the day is done. We will see what we get. I don't want to say this day was a bust but I wan unable to achieve the 65F I was looking for when cooling the wort. I think if this batch comes out too estery again I need to re-evaluate how I cool the beer and amend the process and try again. It's late. I'm going to bed. 

Split Batch Results

So after three weeks I sampled the split batch and two things were noted. First, the beer with more yeast was less estery. Second, both beers were still horribly estery. So, I've learned what things I can do to get less esters but I still have an ester problem in my brewery. What am I doing to cause this problem? It will be a fun adventure to figure it out. Who knows. Maybe I will never figure it out and my career as an amateur brewer is over. But I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet!

Possible issues:
1. I think I need to keep the wort cool before I pitch. I usually get impatient and cool the wort only to 72ish, pitch the yeast, and then cool to 65ish in the chest freezer. Maybe this drop in temp pisses off the yeast. So next brew I think I will cool the wort more before I pitch.

2. The chest freezer is currently set at +-3F. I always thought this was sufficient since the beer is a large thermal mass and would not fluctuate all that much. Also, this will keep the compressor from cycling on and off like a boss. Perhaps this is causing the beer temp to fluctuate too much. Once I get the temp controller working I will be able to gather data about this issue.

3. Equipment issues. Maybe the stuff that measures the temperatures is broke. Maybe the O2 stone is broke. Maybe some other equipment is to blame. I'm going to try #1 and #2 before I start thinking about this.

Wish me luck.

Pitching Rate Split Batch

So while the Helles came out good it grew fruity over time. I think that's because as it cleaned up the esters became easier to detect. I have no homebrew club here so I get feedback when I can. I think I should enter some competitions to simply to get feedback from the judges. I'll look into that. Anyway I digress. I went to The Bearded Brewer in Quartz Hill to get grain and I brought the Helles for feedback. He went to all kinds of beer school. The degrees are on the wall when you walk in. He agreed with the ester character and it got me thinking about how I can change my process to get rid of that flaw. One thing I think I'm going to need is to pitch more yeast. So that's what this split batch will be today. We will make EKA IV and split the batch into two fermenters. In one we will pitch one vial of WLP001 and the other we will pitch two vials of WLP001.

BTW, that guy at The Bearded Brewer is super cool. I've been to some shops where the workers are assholes. This is nicest guy to ever own a brew shop. I think he was a carpenter in his previous life and it shows in the shop. Beautiful hardwood floors. Plus he has a sweet beard. He looks like a lost child of one of the ZZ Top boys.

The recipe and water is going to be that same as EKA IV. I won't bother to capture it here. The only difference is the yeast.
WLP001 x1 and x2 - Date = 10-10-13 - Lot number = PSICEL-44-2


Ok. All done for the day. It was a very ho hum brew day. I brewed by myself. The OG is 1.052. Ellie is with her sister in LA. I think Claresta is in LA too. I didn't invite Kevin or Pooley because I'm trying to drink a little less.

One small thing that did come up was that I remembered that there is no way I'm going to fit two fermenters in the current chest freezer. As luck would have it, a new chest freezer was sitting in the garage so I pulled it out of its box and it now houses the two fermenters. I also put on my other sticky from Christmas a while back. Here's some pics:

 

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????