Steam and Schwarz

We took samples from the Steam and the Schwarz beer's today. The steam tastes really good, nice and light, a bit of hoppiness. The schwarz doesnt taste as good this time around but I am also trying it about 3 weeks sooner into the process this time than last time. I put the steam into the fridge to cold crash today with plans to keg it on Wendesday or Thursday of next week. I am still undecided if this beer will benefit from a week of conditioning at room temp or if we should just put it into the kegerator and quick carbonate it so we have something to drink when the black IPA kicks (which will be any day now). The black lager wont be kegged for about another month, and it will spend a week or so cold crashing prior to that.

Double Pale Ale; Barleywine Bottling

On Saturday we successfully brewed 10 gallons of our Double Pale Ale (technically we should classify it as an IPA, but whatev) with our neighbor while he brewed 5 gallons of an Old Ruffian Barleywine clone on his system. We started early, and after 5 hours, he had 10 gallons of beer and I had 5, so it was a very productive use of our time. This is our fist time using Faloncer's Flight hops, which is a blend of 4-5 Pacific Northwest Hops. I think it's Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Sorachi Ace, and maybe something else. Either way, it will contain a nice citrus aspect commonly found in American Hops as well as some piney/spicy/dankness. Very excited to try this one in 6 weeks.



We also bottled our lastest vintage of barleywine. Elise and I did it after we put Cooper to bed, so it was nice to have some company while I bottled. We filled only 7 bombers this year, as opposed to last year where it was all bombers. We thought by filling more 12 oz bottles, we are more likely to actually drink it because we dont have to commit to as much strong beer in one sitting. After the 7 bombers we filled an additional 18-12 oz bottles and we are planning to wax dip them pretty soon. Last year they didnt get any wax until the Fall, but with the move coming up, we'll get them done much sooner this year.



With the flurry of brewing that has been going on the last 6 weeks, we've had to start labeling every batch to keep them straight. Before we bottled the barleywine, we had 4 different beers in primary and 2 differnt beers in secondary, so it was getting hard to keep everything straight. We only have 2 more brews planned, and by the middle/end of April we should have 3 beers on tap for a little variety.

First Snow

Today was racked the first snow to secondary. Since we had a little more than 5 gallons we put about 0.75 gallons into a jug and will add a Light French Oak wood spiral to the jub about 14 days prior to bottling. Last year's Oaked First Snow was a little too "intense oak flavor" for some, so we'll tone it down a bit this year and try to find a happy medium. The beer finished at 1022 (down from 1090) for 9% alcohol. Less than last year's 10.1%, but still respectable. For whatever reason, this year most of our repeat brews have been about 1-2% less alcohol than the previous years. Hopefully it is just a fluke in the 2 beers it has happened (Snow and BW) and we'll get back to normal next month when we brew the Imperial Stout.

We've also drank all but 2 of the First Snow's from last year. With rain in the forcast next week we are planning on finishing those as we have to say goodbye to Elky and pack him away until next winter.

Tomorrow is our Double Pale Ale with Falconer's Flight, followed the next weekend by our Belgian Pale Ale. Two weeks after that will likely be our last beer brewed in Colorado. With plans to move around the first or second week of June, we want to make sure everything is bottled before then. We might try to squeeze something of lower gravity in, but I doubt it.

Everything else is sitting nicely in the garage. We plan on bottling the Barleywine on Sunday, and hopefully this year we'll wax dip soon after that. We have 3 empty kegs waiting to be filled and hopefully by the 2nd week in April, they'll all be filled with the Steam Beer, Schwarz, and Brown Ale.

Tragedy At the Brewery

It's been a while since my last post and a lot has happened around the brewery. First, we brewed a California Common (aka Steam Beer) 2 weeks ago. It was a relatively straight-forward brewday and a very simple recipe. Only 9 lbs of 2-row and 0.9 lbs of crystal 60 along with a modest 2 oz's of northern brewer hops. This beer also used the California Lager yeast, and as of today, is out of the fridge (that was set at 55 degrees) and is resting in the garage (about 63-65 degrees) until we keg it on the 27th. Hopefully, it will be a nice, crisp, easy drinking beer for the spring time.

As for the tragedy: The people I bought our kegs from told me the kegs were "clean" and just needed to be sanitized prior to use. I sanitized and then filled with our schwarzbier and brown ale. The brown ale was sitting in our garage to condition/bulk age for about 1 week before I put it into the fridge and hooked up the gas. Being that I am not very patient and just want to taste a sample of everything, I took a sample of the brown ale on Friday night. Terrible. It tasted soapy; very soapy. I thought that was odd (seeing as I though the black ipa had a similar taste, though not as strong as the brown ale) so I took a sample from the black lager. Even worse. Undrinkable.

I went to the garage again and opened up the only empty keg to see if there was something inside that could be giving this off taste. When I smelled the inside, it smelled exactly like the off flavor we were tasting in the beers: a bit medicinally and very soapy. We came to the conclusion that whatever the kegs were "cleaned" with were not properly rinsed out and as a result, the flavor was now in our beers. We think that since the black IPA was so hoppy, that it masked the flavors to some extent which is why it wasnt as noticeable. However, in the brown, which is less hoppy, and the black lager which is barely hoppy, the flavors were much more pronounced and made the beers undrinkable. Since they were undrinkable, we had to dump them.

I think I died a little inside as I dumped 10 gallons of beer down the drain on Friday night. They were both really good before going into the kegs, especially the schwarzbier, and we had such high hopes for them. The black lager was the hardest to dump as we brewed it early enough to allow for it to actually lager for 6-8 weeks before drinking. The brown was to be the replacement for the black IPA as that keg is getting closer and closer to kicking.

As a result of the fallout, Elise let me make both the brown and the schwarz simultaneously on Sunday. Luckily, my neighbor now has his own mash tun and boil kettle and I was able to do side-by-side batches and get everything done in about 4.5 hours. There were a couple of mixups with hop additions, but nothing that would make much of a difference in the final beer. Now we have about 5 weeks before the brown ale will be ready to drink and hopefully we can drink the black lager in the middle of May.

50th Brew

Today we brewed our First Snow Winter Ale, and not only was it Valentine's Day, but it was also Rowdy Reptile's 50th batch of beer. We've come along ways from our first batch. Starting out with partial boils and extract batches we are nowing brewing all grain and we have much much more brewing toys. Things like grain mills help us save money, a 12 gallon brew pot allows us to brew up to 10 gallon batches, oxygenation kits and stir plates allow us to make better beer by treating the yeast better, and having the ability to keg and drink draft beer allows us to not have to bottle as well as looking pretty badass.



It was a solo brew day today as today is my last day off before I go on interviews and then when I return it's back to the real world and rotations. Due to the size of this beer (22 lbs of grain + 7 gallons of water to strike with) I had to mash on our work bench in the garage. Normally, we mash on the ground, then lift the cooler up to the bench to lauter the sweet wort. However, since I wouldnt have been able to lift the cooler, I did everything up on top today. The only issue was adding the crushed grain to the water as I couldnt pour and stir like I normally do. Instead, they grain was just added in sections, about 25% at a time. As you can see from the picture we about maxed out the mash tun with the grain/water.

I switched up the boil length this time and increased it to 90 min (from 60). I am hoping that by adding some boil time, we'll increase the efficiency by allowing us to use more water initially. However, I ended up with about a half gallon more wort than I anticipated, so the gravity was a little lower than last year (1090 comapred to 1099 last year). If I would have been able to boil off that extra 0.5 gallon, we would have been almost identical to last year's gravity. This year should clock in around 9.5% alcohol, which is still good enough for a winter-warmer ale.



Normally to save time, while the boil is going I will empty out the mash tun and then clean the cooler. I put the spent grain into a garbage bag and then go inside to clean the cooler. I normally leave the dogs outside while I'm gone because they are usually pretty well behaved. When I came back down the garage I found Bailey with her head in the back eating some grain! This is even after they each got a small portion to munch on.



We also put the black lager into secondary and sampled it. It finished at 1015, for 5.25% alcohol; the sample also tasted very good. The color was "browner" than I thought, although it looks black while in the carboy. We'll secondary it for about 2 weeks to clear it up a bit more and then we'll keg it and put it into the fridge to lager it properly. I'll be very excited to try this one in a few months.

We'll be bottling the Dubbel soon as well. I'm looking forward to trying it to see what difference the homemade candi sugar will make. Even though the sugar was pretty dark, it didnt lend as much color to the beer as we wanted, and it is therefore much lighter than we would like. But right now I'm more concerned about the flavor of the beer as color is pretty easy to adjust in the future. After that we'll be bottling the barleywine and then brewing our last beer using the Cali Lager yeast. After the steam beer we will need to make our Russian Imperial Stout for next winter, and then finally, I will be able to brew the Double Pale Ale with our neighbor again. We bought the hops for that beer at the same time as the Black IPA, so everytime I open the freezer I'm reminded about that beer.

As for the Black IPA, I think it is finally carbonated and it tastes pretty good. Elise and I have been noticing a "soapy" mouthfeel and subtle flavor to the beer though. This could be due to the brewing water or potentially carbonic acid. When people try to carbonate kegs very quickly you can get a build up of carbonic acid intially, but it dissipates after a week or two. If they flavor goes away, it will likely be the carbonic acid, but since it's a mouthfeel sensation as well, I think it is most likely the high amount of carbonates in the water. I've ranted about that before, so I'll leave it alone for now.

Brown Ale

Today was a quick brew (less than 4 hours from start to finish) and we made our Brown Ale again. This is now the 5th time we've made this recipe and the only thing that changed this time was a substitue of Columbus hops for Chinook at the 60 minute addition. Both are high alpha hops (creating similar IBUs) and I doubt we'll be able to tell the difference. We'll dry hop this with 0.5 oz each of Centennial and Columbus and will keg this beer hopefully in about 4 weeks.

After the snow storm dumped 15" of snow over the weekend I had plenty of snow to use with our immersion chiller and was able to cool the beer down very quickly. Normally, we use about 16-20 gallons of water to cool a batch down (we save 11 gallons by using a 5- and 6-gallon carboy to store water until the next brew). However, today we only needed about 10 gallons before the beer was chilled to about 65 F.



As usual, the dogs received a bit of grain to munch on.



Next week we plan on making our First Snow Winter Ale followed up in a couple of weeks with a Steam Beer. Both of these beers will use the California Lager yeast from the Schwarzbier batch. We will secondary the Schwarz the day before we brew the Snow in order to get the yeast. I am also leaning towards getting 2 more kegs so that we can keg the Schwarz and properly lager it in the fridge until we serve it in the end of May. Hopefully by then we'll have a couple of taps going and will also have the Steam on tap with the Schwarz as we planned on drinking these on the weekend of Cooper's baptism.

Draft Beer

We finally received the new faucet from the online retailer and were able to successfully pseudo-carbonate the Black IPA. It's not completely carbonated yet, but it will hopefully be completed in about 7 days as the keg equilibrates with the CO2 tank at our desired carbonation level.

I had originally bought 4.5' beverage lines, but after talking with the people at the homebrew store, I found out that that length of line would be too short. By being too short, we wouldnt provide enough resistance to offset the pressure in the keg, aka: Foam City. However, I went and bought an 8' line and it is pouring very nicely now.

Another thing to consider was the fact that we are living at 5414 ft of elevation. To get our desired carbonation levels, we have to adjust our regulator pressure up 1 PSI for every 2000 ft. This was another reason why we needed longer lines to properly balance the system.

We are really enjoying the beer so far. It's hop aroma/flavor are very good with lots of citrus notes and the bitterness is nice and firm as well. Right now, as it is still undercarbonated, it is feeling like a hand-pulled beer by being slightly creamier, but as the carbonation increases, this will fade and hopefully the hoppiness will shine a bit more.

Over time we are going to slowly start accumulating more kegs with the goal of having 3 beers on tap at a time. Right now we could easily fit 3 kegs in the fridge (with the CO2 tank outside the fridge), but we could likely fit more if we build a shelf in the bottom to allow us to use the space in the back of the fridge where a hump is. If we have 3 beers on tap at at time I think we would need to have at least 5 kegs. The other 2 would be conditioning/carbonating while the others were being served. By having the other 2 kegs "on deck" we wouldnt have to wait long in between blowing one keg and drinking the next one in line. To have 3 kegs going we'll need 3 more kegs, 2 more faucet/shanks, and we'll have to get either a multiline regulator or a splitter to supply CO2 to all of the kegs. The splitter would be the cheapest and would simply split the CO2 into as many lines as we need. The only issue would be that all 3 kegs would be on the same CO2 pressure and therefore have the same level of carbonation. This would work for about 75% of the beers we brew, as they are mostly of the American persuasion. However, if we wanted to have an English- of Belgian-style ale on tap we would need to alter their levels of carbonation separately as they require higher and lower levels than American ales. This is where a multiregulator system would allow us to dial in each keg separately to our desired carbonation. This is more expensive than the simple splitters, but provides much more control.

We plan on brewing a Brown Ale tomorrow that will hopefully be ready to keg in 4 weeks to allow us something to have when the Black IPA kicks. I will be interested to see how fast it takes us to finish the keg compared to other beers. I see us using our 9 oz taster glasses for the keg more often than pint glasses, but with the ease of just pulling a pint I think we'll drink that beer more often than other ones. Hopefully it will last long enough to get the brown ready so we dont have an empty tap.

Below are a couple of screen shots of the types of regulators/splitters we would need to have 3 kegs going at once.