Grain Mill

The grain mill finally arrived! Riley is seen here sniffing it and will give you an idea of the size of the mill. All the metal that you see is basically a vessel (hopper) to hold the unmilled grain while it feeds down onto the rollers. The metal rod sticking out the bottom right of the base area can either be attached to a hand crank to hand-mill the grain or an electric drill at about 500 rpm (guess which we will be doing). The brown particle board is shaped so that the mill can sit on top of a bucket and the milled grain will collect in the bucket below.










This is the view into the grain mill showing the rollers that crush the grain. The space in between is adjustable and the tighter the gap is, the more starches that will be available during the mash and the higher the efficiency will be. However, because the tighter crush will produce more flour from grinding the grain, the chances of having a stuck mash increase. So its a give and take between gap size, efficiency, and lautering ability. Most homebrew stores that have mills in them usually have a wider gap so that when new homebrewers go home and brew for the first time they dont get a stuck mash and are more likely to continue brewing and return to the store to buy more ingredients. Right now our efficiency is about 73% so it will be interesting to see what our efficiency jumps to with the finer crush.







This is a picture of the 50 lb sack of grain that I bought the other day. We will be buying a lot of these in the future and probably 3-4 different types of malt. Our standard American 2-row which we use in American style beers will be used the most. Pilsner malt is used in lagers and some Belgians Ales because of its cripsness and delicate flavor. Marris Otter is used in British style beers (like our First Snow) and in ales in which a "larger" malt presence is wanted; some people use MO in the IPAs, but it is common in porters and stouts as well. I've been looking at our recipes lately and it looks like we use a lot of Crystal 60L, a specialty malt that we use a lot, so we might buy a sack of that to save some money.








This is a picuture of the 5 gallons buckets that we will use to store the grain in instead of the big bag. The buckets are not airtight, but they are close enough and the lids will keep bugs and other things out of the grain. One sack of grain fits into 2 buckets that can be stacked on top of each other and stored easily.

Belgian Pale

Just finished cleaning up from today's brew sesh- 4 gallons of our Gold medal Belgian Pale Ale. The original recipe was written for 8 gallons, so instead of converting to 5 gallons, we just chopped the recipe in half. It was smooth brew day, we hit our volumes and numbers, and from start to finish, including cleanup, it was a 4 hour day.

The fermentation fridge is being used for this batch although I am a little wary. The garage at this time of year is usually around 59-60, and when we arent brewing the fridge will be at that temp after 3 or 4 days. When it gets colder I have seen the fridge get down as low as 53 and the next few days its going to be very cold here in Denver. We are finally going to get some snow, but the overnight lows on Thursday and Friday are below 0. The Belgian yeast we use likes warmer temps, 67-71ish, and to make sure that it doesnt get too cold, I wrapped the fermenter in a blanket in the fridge. If it doesn't stay warm enough in the fridge I will have to bring the fermenter inside, but it will be harder to maintain a constant temperature. Hopefully the beer starts fermenting by this evening and will generate enough heat to keep it warm to last through the weekend.

In other news, we have purchased a grain mill and it should be here on Friday. With the new mill, we will be able to mill our own grain right before we brew. Some people say using fresh grain makes a difference, I dont know about that, but I do know we will be saving a lot of money. I bought a sack (50 lbs) of Pale 2-row which is our base malt thats makes up ~75-90% of a grain bill in most American styles of beer that we brew. Normally, the Pale 2-row is $1.50/lb, but I was able to get the sack for $45.50 or $0.90/lb. $45 is still a little high for a sack of grain, but now that we have a mill we can get in on a group buys with other hombrewers in the Denver area and get sacks for ~$25 ($0.50/lb). The grain mill was fairly expensive, but after a few sacks of grain, the mill will have paid for itself and we can a lot less expensively. Hopefully we will get the mill on Friday and I will post some picks of the mill and the sack of grain that we have right now.

Gold Medal Beer Results

Above are the pages that the judges filled out while judging our Belgian Pale. The first page is mostly a FYI type of page, but the last two are people's thoughts about the beers.

We just entered 4 more beers (Wee Heavy, Belgian Dubbel, Double Vision Barley Wine, and Elkie's First Snow) into another homebrew competition in Colorado. The Big Beers, Belgians, and Barley Wines is a homebrew competition and beer festival held every year in Vail to showcase big beers from around the country. They also have a homebrew competition in the same vain, so our biggest beers are the ones being entered (the Dubbel is the lowest of the bunch at a meager 7.5%). I dont expect to win anything in this competition as it is much much bigger and more competitive than the competition we won, but I do hope to have some high scoring beers and get some good feedback. We'll see what happens,


(You can click on the image to see a larger view)

Rowdy Reptile Brewing: An Award Winning Brewery

Our Belgian Pale Ale took GOLD in a local Belgian/French Ale homebrew competition!!!This was our first entry into any competition, and who would have thought, we take home a Gold Medal. Hopefully, we get a plaque or a medal or something to hang up, but for now, we are just enjoying the win. I noticed the competition when I was picking up the ingredients for the IPA and when I got home I discovered that we only had 3 bottles left and the competition needs 2. Luckily, there was 1 left and we were able to taste our first gold medal beer.


PS If you click on the picture above you'll get a better view of the results page.