Pale Ale Review

Recipe:
9 lbs Pale 2-row
10.6 oz Crystal 40L
10.6 oz Munich
1.6 oz Crystal 60L

0.5 oz Chinook at 60 min
1 oz Cascade at 20 min
1.5 oz Chinook + 1 oz Cascade at 2 min

Dry Hop: 1 oz Chinook

Yeast: WY1272 American Ale II
OG: 1054
FG: 1011
Alochol= 5.6%

This was an attempt to make a little more malty pale ale the Panda Watch Pale Ale. I thought by substituting Munich malt for Carapils, it would lend more malt flavor to the beer without changing the body very much. The result wasn't very good. Compared to the last pale ale (Panda Watch), this one just seems a lot more "blah." It doesnt have the crispness of the previous version, it's not as "bright," and overall it's a little underwhelming.

Appearance: As you can see in the picture, it's still really hazy and kind of a dull copper color. I am starting to think that my aluminum kettle is too thin and is resulting in some caramelization/color change during the boil. It has a reasonable head on the pour that dissipates into a thin layer.

Aroma: The aroma is probably a little more malty this time around. The Chinook hops are providing more of a dark, resinous aroma (as opposed to floral/citrus from other hops) that I like, but there isn't enough of it.

Taste: Again, a little underwhelming, but some malt sweetness upfront and a touch of bitterness. The finish is pretty smooth, which makes it easy to drink.

Overall: not something I would brew again. I think a lot of my problems with hoppy beers are that I don't add enough hops. Seems simple to add a lot of hops to hoppy beers, but before I had a job we couldn't spend $40-50 on a beer. Hops are expensive when you only buy 1 oz at a time, so we used less than we probably should. There's a total of 5 oz in the beer, and it probably should be closer to 8, with all of the additional hops at the end of the boil/dry hop. The malt bill isn't great either. If I were to use Munich again, it should probably be closer to 2 lbs (not around a half a pound).

Overall, it's back to the drawing board for our pale ale. The Panda Watch was good, but I think it could be better. I'm going to start buying hops in bulk this year and I think that will really make a difference. At $1/oz it will satisfy my need to make inexpensive beers, but I can use twice the hops and still spend less overall than previously. I found a great blog (Bertusbrewing.com) by a homebrewer who brews mainly IPAs. I'm going to try a couple of his recipes (and use the same amount of hops) and see where we stand after that. I'm also going to use some of the recipes in the IPA book Elise got me and hopefully, in the next few months we'll have some proper IPAs and Pale Ales on tap.

#TeamDietrich

Kegerator Part 5: Let There Be Beer

After everything was dry, it was time to finally attach the gas and beer lines. The kegs had been sitting in the kegerator the entire time, so they were cold (and aside from the pale ale which had a leak) were all carbonated. Therefore, as soon as I could hook them up, we would be able to drink from them.

The gas (22 feet) and beverage line (40 ft) that I bought each came as 1 continuous length of tubing. I had taken some measurements from where I thought our 5-port manifold would be mounted and came up with about 1.5’ of tubing for 3 of the gas lines and 2’ for the other 2 gas lines; the extra length would be used to attach the manifold to the CO2 tank. Each beer line would be 8’ in length, with 4 taps, I only technically needed 32 feet of tubing. I wanted an extra beer line in case we ever brought a keg somewhere and needed to set up a picnic tap, I would have enough line to serve it properly. Each tubing was cut and then attached to the correct connector (gas vs beverage) and fitted with a hose clamp to ensure a good seal. I mistakenly bought 1/4” gas-line attachments for the manifold instead of 5/16” attachments. You would think that the 1/16” difference wouldn’t matter that much, but surprisingly it did. Thankfully, with the hose clamps tightly secured, there weren’t any gas leaks coming from the manifold.

Instead of trying to drill into the side of the freezer (and risk damaging something vital behind the wall) I decided to glue 6 magnets to the back of the manifold and mount it to the sides of the chest freezer. I glued a few days in advance and the glue was cured nicely in time to start assembling. Here it is on the outside of the chest freezer to make it a little easier to visualize.

After setting up the gas lines, it was finally time to connect our beer lines. The tubes were simply run up to the tower and attached to the back of the faucets with hose clamps. There is plenty of room in the tower, so the connections with the faucets don’t need to be angled at 90 degrees which made them easy to attach. We wrote with a silver sharpie on the actual connections down below to make it easy to identify which tap line was which for ease when swapping kegs out.

Next was time to mount the faucets. We bought standard chrome-plated faucets (brass underneath) as they are much less expensive than full-on stainless steel faucets (about $25/ea vs $50/ea). They get the job done, but aren’t as nice and tend to drip more than stainless steel Perlick faucets. Over time though, we’ll slowly convert each one to a SS faucet, and maybe even a stout faucet for when we serve stout as the faucets are easy to change out.

After all the lines were set up, we needed to flush the tubing with sanitizer prior to serving any beer through them. I filled a keg with StarSan (a no-rinse sanitizer) and then attached it to the CO2 tank. Each tap was then opened to allow sanitizer to run though the lines and faucet for about 30 seconds. After all the lines were clean, we hooked up the beer and were ready to drink, finally.

Kegerator Part 4: Tiling

Picking out tile wasn’t an easy task. There are so many options and a very wide range in prices. We didn’t have a ton of money to spend on the project, so it was a process trying to find a quality tile that we liked and wouldn’t break the bank. We eventually settled on a glass and stone mosaic combination we found at Lowes. For $5.98/sq foot, it was a pretty good price as our 2^nd choice was about double that.

We needed to get 11 tiles to fill the top and had to do some cutting to fill in the top row and the last rows on the edge. Since the tile is manufactured to “interlock”  there isn’t a flat edge on the sides and we had to get a tile saw in order to square off both ends. We first looked at renting one, but estimated that it would be about $75-100 depending on how long we wanted to use the saw (4hrs vs 24 hrs). So we turned to Craig’s List again and found a saw for $55. Other supplies that we ended up having to buy included 2 trowels (to spread the mortar), grout float, grout sponge, drill-bit mixing attachment, and spacers.

The day we decided to lay the tile I was working an evening shift (230-11p) so I cut the tile in the morning. Using the tile saw was pretty easy and the blade was still in good condition. It cut through both the glass and stone easily as long as you went slow and there was plenty of water in the blade-well. We had laid the tile out the night before and numbered each tile to match where it would lay on the lid. The planning beforehand really made the cutting easy and I was done in about 15 minutes.

When I got home from work (around 1130p) and with both kids asleep, we mixed our mortar and set off. I was responsible for spreading the mortar and Elise laid the tile behind me. Neither one of us had any previous experience with tiling before, but we each had a read a couple of articles and watched some videos on YouTube, so we had a little bit of an idea of what we were supposed to be doing. It turned out to be a pretty smooth process, except for around the tower. A round tower with rectangular tile made for a little bit of difficulty, but with the extra tile pieces we had left I cut some angles and we made it work as best we could.

We had to let the mortar sit for 24 hours before we could grout, but since there was both stone and glass on our mosaic, it was recommended to us to seal the stone prior to grouting to avoid the grout soaking into the stone. On Day 2 it took about 5 min to brush sealant on the stone tiles and another 24 hours of waiting until we were ready to grout.

On Day 3 we mixed the grout and Elise worked it into the tiles. The tape around the tower was taped only on the top so the grout would be flush against the sides of the tower to hide the plywood beneath.  After the grout sat for a bit, it was time to use the sponge and wipe off the excess. Luckily the sponge had a textured side which made the scrubbing easier than expected to remove the stubborn grout from the tiles, but overall it wasn’t too painful of a process for Elise to do.

After the mortar dried for 24 hours, we had to apply another coat of sealant, this time to protect our newly finished grout. I didn’t have much of a clue as to what I was doing, so I just soaked the sponge with sealant and spread it around the tile. I applied 2 coats to make sure I got enough on there and then waited for about 30 minutes prior to wiping the excess off. After that, it was another 24 hours to completely dry and then we could set up the beer lines and finally start drinking.

Kegerator Part 3: The Tower

Before we could lay any tile (or mount the tower) we had to lay some plywood on top of the unit as the mortar wouldn’t stick as well to metal as it would glue. We found some relatively inexpensive wood at Lowe’s and had it cut to size. In retrospect, I wish we would have chosen a little thicker wood as the one we bought was bowed a bit even after we laid it flat for about 36 hours. I doubt anyone else would notice, but Elise and I can still see a little bit of the bow even after the tile had been laid. 

We then bought some heavy duty glue and glued the wood to the top. Overnight, we laid the tile, boxes, buckets of sanitizer, and pretty much anything heavy we could find on top of the plywood to make sure we got a good seal from the glue before we did anything else.

After 24 hours, it was time to mount the tower. The tower came with 4 screws, but I knew they wouldn’t be long enough to reach clear through the lid, so we bought some 2.5” screws with matching nuts and washers. Our original plan was to have the screws be long enough to mount the washers/nuts on the inside of the lid in the freezer, but once we got down there, it was harder to get everything to line up than we thought. It took some trial and error (and widening of a couple of holes) to get the screws going  where we thought we wanted them to go, but overall we had a hard time getting everything to be flush at the bottom of the screws. We also realized that the inside was plastic and pretty flexible making it less than ideal to mount to. Instead, we just decided to screw the washers/nuts all the way up to just underneath the surface of the lid. This was the thickest and sturdiest point, so it turned out to be much better anchor point than our original plan; not to mention much easier as once the screw was threw the lid, it didn’t really matter if it wasn’t perfectly straight.

We bought a 2.5” hole saw (drill bit) to make a hole through the plywood and lid to run the beer lines through. The tower itself is 3” in diameter with the base at 4.5” wide. We wanted to make the hole for the lines a little smaller than the tower itself just to allow some more contact between the tower and the lid as we weren’t sure how steady it was going to be. It turned out that the 2.5” hole was the perfect fit and a piece of 2” wide by 2” high PVC piping made a nice port for the lines to go through and keep the insulation in the lid where it belonged.

It took about 30-45 minutes to get all of the holes drilled and the tower mounted but once it was up, it was looking good. It felt sturdy enough, but we were hesitant at first to completely open the lid and let the tower “hang,” but the screws and nuts held true. Next we needed to tape off the base prior to tiling and take some measurements to determine where our cuts would be needed to fit the tiling around the tower.