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.

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.

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.