Probably the busiest brewing weekend we will have all summer. It started Saturday with the bottling of 103 bottles of beer; 42 bottles of the Shark Week Red ale that was hopped with 1 oz of East Kent Golding hops, and 61 bottles of Two Bits Wit. We bottled the red during the mash for Saturday’s brew, and did the wit during the boil. Elise made stickers for the tops of the caps that have the name of the beer on them, and they look really good.
As for the 8 gallons of pale ale that we made, everything did not go as smoothly as planned. First off, we have been having a little bit of trouble with the spigot on the end of our mash tun that is used to drain off the wort. In the last batch (brown ale) the spigot was new, and we thought was working fine, but we soon discovered that there was a small leak in the seal around spigot. We attempted to fix it for this week, but the new addition did not drain the wort out of tun very well. Instead of leaving the grain bed dry, there was about 1 gallon of wort left in the cooler that we could not get out because of the position of the spigot on the inside of the cooler. Because of this our efficiency was down to about 70% this week compared to 75% last week. I will be making yet another trip to Home Depot’s plumbing section, about the 4th in the last 2 weeks, and can hopefully solve the problem for good.
The 8 gallons of pale ale was hopped with Amarillo and Cascade hops, and will get another dry hop addition of Cascade next week. The 8 gallons were split evenly and we pitched a Belgian yeast strain and an American strain. The American strain is now on its third batch of beer, and had just come off the red ale. The Beglian yeast strain was last used in January of 2010, and we were a little skeptical about it still being viable, but a large starter was made last week, and the fermentation started about 6 hours after we pitched the yeast. As mentioned earlier, with the efficiency down, we had a slightly lower original gravity of 1052 than we were expecting, but the beer should finish at around 5.5% alcohol.
As for next week, the hoppy beer trend continues with an IPA (followed after that by a Double IPA). We are still selecting with recipe to brew, either Elise’s or a clone recipe of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale. But we might actually end up brewing both depending on how our week!
Monday, June 28, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Brown Ale
The brown is now quietly fermenting away in its new home in the garage: a swamp cooler. With the summer heat comes much higher temperatures in our garage, and anything over 70 degrees is too hot for beer. During the winter, our garage is usually in the low to mid 50’s which is too cold for ales, but just inside the door to our house, it is in the low 60’s which is perfect for fermenting ales. To deal with these warm temperatures in the summer we have to make a swamp cooler, basically a large bucket of water that the beer sits in. We add ice packs to the water and drape a t-shirt over the bucket to take advantage of evaporative cooling. We can usually bring the ambient temperature down about 10 degrees which isn’t as cold as I would ideally have it, but close enough. Some day we will be getting a refrigerator to put in the garage specifically for fermentation, but sadly, it won’t be soon enough.
As for the brown ale, it was one of the easiest, least stressful brew days that either one of us can remember. After doing the 8 gallon 90 minute boil Wit last week, this 5 gallon 60 minute boil seemed to go very smoothly and quickly. The OG was 1064, and this beer should be about 6% alcohol. This is our first time using an American strain of yeast on a brown ale, last time we used an Irish ale yeast, and this actual yeast will be used again and again throughout the summer. In 2 weeks we will use most of the yeast on an Imperial Stout, and then the rest will be used later for an IPA and a porter. Next week’s pale ale is going to be a split between American and Belgian yeast. The American yeast will come from the red ale that will be bottled on Saturday, and the Belgian is a strain that we have had in the fridge for a few months now that was taken from a previous Belgian IPA batch. That same barch of yeast is also going to be used a lot this summer in our Belgian Dark Strong Ale, Belgian Dubbel, Belgian Tripel, and we are going to try throwing Belgian yeast onto our spiced Christmas ale this summer.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
2 Days, 2 Beers, 13 Gallons...Welcome Back
The brewing hiatus is officially over and we kicked off the start of the summer by brewing two beers this past weekend, a red ale and a Belgian wit.
The red ale was a normal 5 gallon batch, and Elise wrote the recipe for and designed a label for it which can be seen on our website. It should be ready right around the time Shark Week on the Discovery Channel begins and the beer is aptly named Shark Week Red Ale. This is a “low gravity” beer for us, especially Elise, who has a hard time letting me brew anything under 6% alcohol. This one should clock in at about 5.4-5.6% depending on the attenuation.
It had been awhile since our last brew session and it definitely took a while to get back into the swing of things. We missed our mash temperature by a couple of degrees, but that was not the biggest problem of the day. Our mash tun has a braid on the inside that is supposed to filter and drain the wort from the grain. Usually the braids are made out of stainless steel and come from washing machine hook ups, but I made a mistake and accidentally bought one that was made out of a polymer. This polymer lacked the strength of its stainless steel counterpart, and as a result would collapse under the weight of the grain and not allow efficient flow. Needless to say, it took us almost an hour and some unorthodox methods to lauter our wort into the kettle and we ended up losing about 1/3-1/2 a gallon of beer because of this. The rest of the day went smoothly, and we finished the beer without any problems. We bottled an American pale ale (a neighbor’s beer whom we had shown how to brew a few weeks prior) in the morning during the mash and used the yeast from the pale ale batch to ferment the red ale. Reusing yeast not only saves money (it is about $7 for each “unit” of yeast) but the beer actually prefers used yeast. The yeast are healthier and since they are used immediately the fermentation starts much quicker resulting in a more attenuative fermentation.
When we finished we went to Home Depot to build a new braid for our mash tun. Elise found a stainless steel braid and we changed the inlet on the inside of the cooler to match the braid a little better. We were worried because the Belgian was going to be harder to lauter because of the high percentage of wheat malt and oats in the grist, and we wanted to make sure that it didn’t take us 2 hours to collect our wort.
Sunday morning comes, and we add our strike water, and again we missed our mash temp by a couple of degrees; 2 degrees higher this time, compared to the red where we missed on the low end. This was an 8 gallon batch and we had 21.6 lbs of grain. Our cooler was almost overflowing and we made quite a mess in the garage stirring the mash spilling wort and grains onto the ground. Luckily, Riley has found a new love in eating grain, so she was able to clean most of it up.
This mash smelled and tasted completely different from any beer we had done in the past. Since no caramel malts were added to the beer (the SRM only at 4), this is to date our lightest colored beer by far. Usually the grains are very sweet and sugary, but this mash was quite the opposite. It had the consistency of cereal and was extremely grainy, but not too sweet.
Because of such a light color and lack of roasted malts, the pH of the mash would be much higher if we used our normal water. To combat this, we used distilled water to cut our home water, along with the addition of brewing salts. Out of the total 11 gallons of water that went into the beer, only 40% was actual tap water. Because of the large amount of wheat malt and oats in the beer, we also added rice hulls to help with the lautering process. Rice hulls do not add any flavor, color, or sugar to the beer, but are used simply as an additional filter in the grain bed to prevent a stuck sparge (they don’t taste very good either). When it came time to lauter, we were both very nervous to see if our new braid actually worked, and to our surprise it worked like a champ. We drained about 5.5 gallons of first runnings out of the mash tun in about 10 minutes, and had similar success with the sparge. Having this process run so smoothly should save us about 20 minutes on a brew day compared to ones before we re-did the braid. You can see in the picture below how fast the wort was draining out of the lauter tun.
The boil went smoothly, and we used Hallertauer hops for the first time, along with 1.5 oz’s each of coriander and bitter orange peel. Hallertauer are noble hops from Europe and are not cheap, but are very important ingredients in certain styles of beer. The Hallertauer hops smelled completely different from any of the hops we have used in the past. Usually, the American style hops we buy smell very citrusy, fruity, and/or grassy. Here is a websites take on one of our favorite hops, Centennial. But the Hallertauer smelled quite earthy and spicy (the website’s take on Hallertauer hops).
We had originally planned to have the beer have an original gravity of about 1060ish (about 6% alcohol), but our efficiency was higher than expected and we ended up with about 8 gallons at 1069 (closer to 7% alcohol). I guess we are going to find out what an Imperial Wit tastes like.
Both beers will more than likely be bottled around the 26th, and hopefully ready to drink in about 4 to 6 weeks.
Next up, an American Brown Ale...
The red ale was a normal 5 gallon batch, and Elise wrote the recipe for and designed a label for it which can be seen on our website. It should be ready right around the time Shark Week on the Discovery Channel begins and the beer is aptly named Shark Week Red Ale. This is a “low gravity” beer for us, especially Elise, who has a hard time letting me brew anything under 6% alcohol. This one should clock in at about 5.4-5.6% depending on the attenuation.
It had been awhile since our last brew session and it definitely took a while to get back into the swing of things. We missed our mash temperature by a couple of degrees, but that was not the biggest problem of the day. Our mash tun has a braid on the inside that is supposed to filter and drain the wort from the grain. Usually the braids are made out of stainless steel and come from washing machine hook ups, but I made a mistake and accidentally bought one that was made out of a polymer. This polymer lacked the strength of its stainless steel counterpart, and as a result would collapse under the weight of the grain and not allow efficient flow. Needless to say, it took us almost an hour and some unorthodox methods to lauter our wort into the kettle and we ended up losing about 1/3-1/2 a gallon of beer because of this. The rest of the day went smoothly, and we finished the beer without any problems. We bottled an American pale ale (a neighbor’s beer whom we had shown how to brew a few weeks prior) in the morning during the mash and used the yeast from the pale ale batch to ferment the red ale. Reusing yeast not only saves money (it is about $7 for each “unit” of yeast) but the beer actually prefers used yeast. The yeast are healthier and since they are used immediately the fermentation starts much quicker resulting in a more attenuative fermentation.
When we finished we went to Home Depot to build a new braid for our mash tun. Elise found a stainless steel braid and we changed the inlet on the inside of the cooler to match the braid a little better. We were worried because the Belgian was going to be harder to lauter because of the high percentage of wheat malt and oats in the grist, and we wanted to make sure that it didn’t take us 2 hours to collect our wort.
Sunday morning comes, and we add our strike water, and again we missed our mash temp by a couple of degrees; 2 degrees higher this time, compared to the red where we missed on the low end. This was an 8 gallon batch and we had 21.6 lbs of grain. Our cooler was almost overflowing and we made quite a mess in the garage stirring the mash spilling wort and grains onto the ground. Luckily, Riley has found a new love in eating grain, so she was able to clean most of it up.
This mash smelled and tasted completely different from any beer we had done in the past. Since no caramel malts were added to the beer (the SRM only at 4), this is to date our lightest colored beer by far. Usually the grains are very sweet and sugary, but this mash was quite the opposite. It had the consistency of cereal and was extremely grainy, but not too sweet.
Because of such a light color and lack of roasted malts, the pH of the mash would be much higher if we used our normal water. To combat this, we used distilled water to cut our home water, along with the addition of brewing salts. Out of the total 11 gallons of water that went into the beer, only 40% was actual tap water. Because of the large amount of wheat malt and oats in the beer, we also added rice hulls to help with the lautering process. Rice hulls do not add any flavor, color, or sugar to the beer, but are used simply as an additional filter in the grain bed to prevent a stuck sparge (they don’t taste very good either). When it came time to lauter, we were both very nervous to see if our new braid actually worked, and to our surprise it worked like a champ. We drained about 5.5 gallons of first runnings out of the mash tun in about 10 minutes, and had similar success with the sparge. Having this process run so smoothly should save us about 20 minutes on a brew day compared to ones before we re-did the braid. You can see in the picture below how fast the wort was draining out of the lauter tun.
The boil went smoothly, and we used Hallertauer hops for the first time, along with 1.5 oz’s each of coriander and bitter orange peel. Hallertauer are noble hops from Europe and are not cheap, but are very important ingredients in certain styles of beer. The Hallertauer hops smelled completely different from any of the hops we have used in the past. Usually, the American style hops we buy smell very citrusy, fruity, and/or grassy. Here is a websites take on one of our favorite hops, Centennial. But the Hallertauer smelled quite earthy and spicy (the website’s take on Hallertauer hops).
We had originally planned to have the beer have an original gravity of about 1060ish (about 6% alcohol), but our efficiency was higher than expected and we ended up with about 8 gallons at 1069 (closer to 7% alcohol). I guess we are going to find out what an Imperial Wit tastes like.
Both beers will more than likely be bottled around the 26th, and hopefully ready to drink in about 4 to 6 weeks.
Next up, an American Brown Ale...
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Brewing Hiatus is OVER!!
I know it has been forever since we have posted anything. With Scotty being so busy in pharmacy school and me being busy at work, we have really been slacking on our brewing schedule. We actually have been brewing a few batches with some neighbors, teaching them the ropes of brewing but now we are ready to get brewing! We have filled out our brewing calendar and every weekend this summer we will be brewing something new. We will be brewing 12 different batches of beer which is over 70 gallons of beer! We look forward to blogging a lot more and letting you all know what we are up to. Let the summer of brewing begin! Our kick off beer....Belgian Witbier!
Cheers and Go Gators!
Cheers and Go Gators!
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