Fermentation

For the Small Beer I thought I would take some pictures to show what fermentation looks like. The top layer of "foam" is called krausen and is basically all yeast. Top cropping is a process that many homebrewers and some commercial brewers (especiall Belgian Trappist ones) do by skimming the top layer to collect very healthy yeast that will be used in the next batch of beer. Its a good way to get viable, healthy yeast and it also saves money by reusing the $7.75 yeast multiple times instead of just once.

18 Hours:



26 Hours:



40 Hours:


72 Hours:



You can see the progression of the fermentation by the rise in the krausen, after about 72 hours most of the time fermentation will slow down and the kruasen will slowly fall back into the beer. Now that we have a dedicated brewing fridge we will then put the beer in the fridge at about 38 F for 4-5 days to make sure everything in suspension will drop to the bottom. Then, when we move the beer off the yeast cake we can make sure to leave everything behind resulting in a clearer beer.

Long Busy Day

Today was a long, super busy day that started at 6 am and ended at ~230pm. First thing this morning was the 75 minute mash for the Anniversary Barleywine. We normally mash for about 45 minutes for normal strength beers (6%-ish, gravity about 1.060) but when you are brewing super high gravity beers (today's BW was 1.119) you want the wort to be more attenuative. By mashing lower at 149-150 (instead of the normal 153-154) different enzymes are more active at that temperature and break up long-chain proteins found in beer. These proteins are what give the sense of "body" in the beer, so by changing the mash temp we can essentially control the body of the final product. By mashing higher (>156) we would have more long-chain proteins in the wort that are not metabolized by the yeast because the short-chain proteins are easier for them to eat. There will be more of these long-chain proteins left after fermentation, a higher final gravity, and more body in the beer. Mashing lower (less than 153) creates more short-chain proteins in the mash which the yeast will metablize easier leaving a higher alcohol beer that is drier because of the lower final gravity.




With the left over grains from the BW we added more water to the mash to make a second beer. This techinique is called "partigyle" in which multiple beers are made from one mash. Historically, this was how all beer was made, and the first runnings (or first "gyle") was the strongest beer that went to the Royals, the second gyle went to the commoners, and the last gyle went to the slaves/workers. Our second beer came in around 1058, which will make about a 5.5% beer. I was hoping to have a little smaller beer of around 4.5%, but since I added some more grains (for color and body) to the mash before the second round of water was added, the gravity came out a little higher than anticapted. Hopefully it will turn out OK, and even if it doesnt, it only cost an extra $3 for a little less than 3 gallons of beer.





Third item on the agenda today was bottling the Porter we that brewed 2 weeks ago. I forgot to buy more bottle caps, so I only had 31 caps available and filled about 42 bottles before I realized I wouldnt have enough caps. We were saving a bunch of bombers (22 oz) for the BW, but I had to use about 12 of them to be able have enough caps to bottle all of our beer. So we will be drinking a lot of porter in the next few months so we can get the bombers back for the BW bottling sometime in May. This batch of porter came in at about 5.5% and the yeast cake was split 3 ways. About 150 mL of it went to the BW and ~60 mL went to the Small Beer. The rest (~500 mL) was saved in a glass jar and will be used in some future batches of beer.



I finally took some pictures of the grain mill in action,





Step 1. Measure grains

Step 2. Hook up a drill and mill the grains

Milled grain:

2010 In Review

Just finished bottling our Belgian Pale Ale, the last batch of beer brewed in 2010. Here are some of the final stats from 2010:

Batches: 19
Volume: 98.5 gallons
Bottles: 859
Overall Cost/bottle: $0.90

Aging Barleywine

Making sure we save some bottles to age. Since we are going to make this beer every year, in 2015 we will be able to do a vertical tasting in which we taste batches that are 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years old; should be cool.

Porter

Today was the first brew with the new grain mill and everything went pretty smoothly. I anticipated having an increase in efficiency because of the grain mill so I tried to control my boil off and have a higher final volume to decrease the gravity. Our normal efficiency was ~73% and today it was 80% all thanks to the grain mill. This batch of porter is mostly acting as a starter so that we can use the yeast for the barleywine we are going to make in about 2 weeks. Because of the very high gravity of the barleywine it takes about double the amount of yeast to ferment. Instead of having to make a starter essentially twice, we just make a batch of beer, use the yeast, and get another beer out of it. I was wanting a lower gravity ale this time and the OG was 1054, so the beer should finish at about 5-5.2% alcohol. We have been making a lot of +7% beers lately, so I wanted something that you could drink more than one and a half of before getting crazy.

With the barleywine just using the first runnings we are going to again make a "small beer" from the second runnings. I am planning on making this similar to a British bitter because the OG is going to be around 1045ish. We are going to add some flaked barley to increase the body, lightly hop it to around 40 IBUs and use a British yeast strain. The British yeast is from a batch we made back in August, so to make sure the yeast is OK and healthy we are making a starter today. After draining all the wort from the mash tun, I added another gallon of water, drained that, and boiled it down so the gravity was about 1030, which is ideal for starters. The starter is too large for the 3 gallon small beer, but we are going to save the extra healthy yeast for another batch in the future.

Since we bought our base grain in bulk, this 4.5 gallon batch of porter only cost $22 including the $7.75 pack of new yeast. We usually dont have to buy yeast, so if that were the case this beer would have only been $15. We are going to use this pack of yeast for this beer, the BW, an imperial stout we are planning, and will hopefully have enough left over from porter to use in another beer after that. Last year, the barleywine cost about $50 for the 3 gallons, but this year it will only cost $29.15 for the 3 gallons, and then the small beer will only be $4 for the extra grains we are adding and the hops are free because we are going to use small amounts of extras left over from other batches.

Happy Anniversary: Barley Wine

Happy 2 year anniversary! Its been two great years that have gone by very quickly, but as they say: "Time flies when you're having fun." I'm lucky to have meet Elise while we were young so that we have an even longer life together to have fun together.

On to the beer! As you can see in the pictures were were successful in wax dipping the tops of the bottles, and since we only made 3 gallons, we only have 13- 22oz bombers and 1- 12oz bottle. This beer was brewed on 1/3/2010 and bottled on 4/17/2010 and we were finally able to crack one open and taste it last night. We opened the 12oz bottle to try so we wouldn't have to drink 22oz's of 12.54% alcohol beer on a Monday night. Unfortunately, this bottle was not carbonated at all. When making high alcohol beers, the alcohol generated during fermentation by the yeast ultimately harms the yeast when the alcohol gets over ~10%. Since the BW (barley wine) finished at 12.54% we essentially murdered any yeast that would be available to bottle-carbonate so we added some new yeast at bottling. Hopefully, this non-carbonated bottle was just a fluke and the rest of the bottles are carbonated appropriately. Even though the beer was not carbonated, it still tasted delicious. It's very dangerous because its does not taste like 12.5% alcohol as the 1 year of aging has tremendously mellowed the alcohol flavor. The hop bitterness is still apparent and complements the malty-sweetness of the brew well. Overall, this is an almost too-easy drinking beer that is very strong and makes for a good sipping beer during these cold winter nights.

I wished we would have gotten around to waxing earlier (instead of yesterday) to keep oxygen out and potentially causing off-flavors as we plan to age this beer for several years. We have 13 bottles now, and are going to save 5 of those to taste 1 per year every year for the next 5 years. That will leave us with 8 bottles to enjoy at our leisure this year. Over the years the flavors will continue to increase in complexity as well as mellow harshers flavors in the beer, and the 6 year old should be amazing. In the top right picture you can see a wax blot that has been stamped with a "D." This was very hard to do as the hot wax did not want to stay on the round bottle long enough to cool and allow me to stamp it. We then made round stamps on wax paper and have been trying different ways to attach those to the bottles. Wax doesn't work very well as an adhesive when applied first to the bottle or the stamp, nor does super glue. Our next option will be a hot-glue gun, but if that doesn't work, then I don't think we will be able to attach the "D stamps" to the bottles.

We kind of dropped the ball with making another batch of this Anniversary Barley Wine with the holidays and everything that was going on, but we plan on making another small batch before school starts. We were initially undecided whether or not our Anniversary beer was going to be the same beer every year, or if we were going to change it up every year. After talking and tasting this beer though, we have decided that we are going to continue brewing this beer every year because it is so good and a proven recipe that makes good beer. Right now, I don't think we are going to scale the recipe up to 5 gallons because of the cost and the large volume of beer that it would make. This is not an everyday beer, and if we drink 2 bottles a month, it will take 4 months to drink all it, which I think is appropriate. This is a special beer not only because it commemorates a special day in our lives, but also because of the scarcity. If it were to be around all the time, then it wouldn't seem as special, so for now, 3 gallons it is. Next year we will have to figure out a way to differentiate between vintages of our BW by either dipping in a different color of wax or making some markings/labels on the bottles.