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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.