Archive for the “Homebrewing” Category

I have really come into some good practices in my brewing the last couple or three beers.  I am getting a system down, trying some newer things and having some success.  The Christmas Stout turned out really nice (IMHO) and I will actually get to taste my Rogue Dead Guy clone next weekend.  On Thursday I did a partial mash Rye IPA using a sparge bag and a new method for rinsing the grain and mashing out.  I had issues keeping the mash temp just right, but didn’t lose much on the original gravity.  The Pacman yeast has been bubbling away since Friday afternoon and I look forward to seeing what it has done when I go to dry hop later this week.  This week when I brewed, I started noting some things in my mind that I wish I had known originally, but am very glad I learned.

Sanitation – This is one of the most important things.  Period.  I knew this.  However, what you have to do is get your method for sanitation down.  Know that you are going to make a bad beer when you are starting and the odds are that it will be because you sacrificed something in sanitation.  The best thing to do is get into habits quickly when it comes to sanitizing and cleaning your equipment.  Boil the things you can boil and keep sanitizer handy.  It only takes 15-30 seconds in the sanitizer to re-ready something, so don’t skip it.

Experimentation – Do not ever be scared to try something.  I am not a kit guy.  Kits are absolutely wonderful things and make incredible beers, however, I would rather formulate the recipe myself.  I like the idea of putting different things in beers and I like the thought of hopping beers in a different way than I have had before.  I am not that far along in this area, but I have little fear when it comes to throwing an ingredient in as long as I do my research and learn the ramifications first.  There are tons of places to feed the experimental drive of anyone.  Use Google to your advantage.  Find active communities on the internet that allow you to learn from other brewers.

Software – Speaking of the internet…use it to find some good beer recipe software.  I have used both Strangebrew and Beersmith.  Of the two, Beersmith is far and away a better tool.  Strangebrew is a great tool, especially for beginners because the learning curve for the software itself is not that steep.  The downside to Strangebrew is that it doesn’t seem to be updated anymore.  It feels dated (putting on my software reviewer’s cap here).  Each time you reinstall, for whatever reasons, you have to email the owner in order to get a new code.  It happens quickly, but it’s still a pain.  Beersmith, on the other hand, is sleek and very tight as applications go.  It is easy to use and has a huge database of ingredients from which to build recipes.  Neither application is that expensive, so go buy one now.  You can try both, if memory serves me correctly, for a limited time.

Your System – No two brewers do things the same way.  One of my brewer friends sanitizes the floor, just in case he drops something.  Another started immediately with  a conical fermenter, completely jumping past the typical bucket and carboy setup.  Both have found success, regardless of the differences in methods in comparison to mine.  Everyone will do it different, create different things and inevitably, unless they are just not good, will brew good beer.  The devil is in the details and he can drive you nuts if you worry about how others do their brewing.  Find what works for you.

Perhaps more than anything I have learned was stated in the first book I ever read on the subject.  Charlie Papazian states clearly “Relax.  Don’t worry.  Have a homebrew.”  No truer words have been said when it comes to the wonderful art that is homebrewing beer.

Recently I have turned my attention towards the next inevitable step in a homebrewer’s life.  I have brewed with solely extract kits, delving into partial mashes or steeped grains in the last 3 beers I have created.  I feel I do a good job as far as recipe creation and execution.  I have learned quite a bit recently and made some friends that are incredible resources.  Based on all that, I feel I will be moving to all grain brewing very soon.

I got an interesting call last week, after considering the progress I am making for about a month, and a friend let me know that a local guy had a mash tun for sale for quite a good price.  I immediately headed to meet this guy and spent $30 on a 5 gallon mash tun with a sparger, false bottom and all the needed connections.  I also cashed in some Amazon gift certificates and ordered a small wort chiller.  Combine that with the turkey fryer and pot I have had in my garage for about 2 years and all of a sudden, I am already planning the recipe for my first all grain brew.

Because I like to learn all I can before jumping into things (laugh if you know me), I decided to do some research.  All grain, for someone who has been in what could be considered the “easy” world of extracts, is actually quite daunting.  It is an added degree of difficulty and this in itself makes the threat of making  a bad beer come to life before the first grain is crushed.  There is nothing a newer homebrewer fears more than making a bad beer.  I have made a couple, so it doesn’t bother me as bad as it might others, but I do have some trepidation with moving forward like this.

Luckily, I found some good information on the intertubes to share with anyone who wants to read it.  In theory and in writing, the process is actually pretty easy.  After doing my due diligence, I am truly looking forward to my Frisky Valley Sweet Sassy Molassy IPA.

Please enjoy!

You Wanna Mash?

A “Cooler” Way to Ease into All-Grain Brewing

All Grain Brewing Guide

I recently brewed a holiday Belgian ale featuring coriander, orange peel, and grains of paradise.  I did a reduced boil in my 4-gallon stainless steel kettle on the stove, using a TrueBrew kit I purchased from Epicurean Outpost in Johnson City, TN.  I decided to use spring water for this batch, since I had convinced myself that my first batch was missing something due to the use of distilled water.  I strained the beer into my 7-gallon stainless steel conical fermenter and pitched the yeast once the temperature reached close to 66 deg F.  After three days, I emptied the trub via the bottom valve of my fermenter and everything seemed normal.  Gravity readings were on par and the beer seemed to be bubbling away quite nicely.  Altogether, I think my beer stayed in the fermenter for 10 days or so.  My wife and I then bottled the beer and set it in my upstairs bathroom closet so it would not be disturbed by sunlight or our curious dogs.

Two weeks ago (which was 3 weeks into bottle conditioning) I tried one of my beers.  My initial taste was very good; I could definitely tell that this was a Belgian ale.  I then tasted the bitterness of the spices I added.  Finally, and tragically, I got a stale taste, very similar to cardboard.  My worst fears were realized.  After conferring with fellow co-worker and master brewer Steve Bellner, the final verdict is most likely oxidation.  So how did this happen?  Where did I go wrong?  Oxidation can occur due to various reasons.  According to Steve, a likely cause in my case could be a wild yeast from the spring water caused the off-flavors in my beer.  I also noticed some water from my airlock had evaporated, so this may have also attributed to my problem.

So, what is the solution?  No matter what kind of water I use next time, I am going to follow my friend’s advice and boil the water and allow it to cool before I put it in my fermenter.  I could also go right back to using store-bought distilled water.  According to Charlie Papizian in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, distilled water is perfectly acceptable to use in your beer when you’re using malt extract instead of all-grain.  My friend also suggested that I use a solution of 50% vodka and 50% distilled water in my airlock.  And finally, I will be careful not to muck around with the wort once I place it in the fermenter and before I pitch the yeast.  Oh, and also, I am waving goodbye to the use of dry yeast.  Only liquid yeast or recultivated yeast for me from now on out.

Ultimately, I am not really that discouraged from this experience.  I can’t expect to make a perfect batch of beer on my 2nd try.  Just like anything in life, you have to learn from your mistakes.  And that’s what I intend to do!  To rebound from this batch, I am going to go back to basics and brew something simple.  I have been eyeing a Fat Tire clone kit on Northern Brewer’s website for some time now, and I am going to finally pull the trigger and order it.  Hopefully this next batch will not be tainted.  But if it is, I’ll figure out what I did wrong and keep plugging away.

Finally, I plan on rating some winter beers in the next week, so stay tuned.  I hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Cheers!

I wanted to take a few minutes and update with a couple links that should help any of the readers of this site out and with the next beer I plan to brew.  Here goes!

Frisky Valley Irish Christmas

1 lb Chocolate Malt
1 lb Roasted Barley Malt
6 lb Golden Malt Extract
1 lb Honey
4 sticks cinnamon
1 oz Sweet Orange Peel
1 oz Corriander
1 oz Fuggles Hops

It’s gonna be good!  I cannot wait to try it out.  I will have a review for sure once it has been opened.  I plan to brew November 1st ensuring a mid-December arrival of my first stout AND my first holiday ale.

As for the linkage:

I love when I @ reply to someone who is “famous” on Twitter and they take the time to respond.  It’s odd that this happens.  Many poker personalities do not.  However, Charlie Papazian who wrote the book (literally) on homebrewing took time out of his day to respond to a request I had for holiday beer/food pairings.  Check out what he sent me if you are interested in matching great holiday foods to some of the more interesting beers you can get during the winter season.

http://seasonalbeerandfood.org/

I got wind of these guys through Twitter as well when someone shared their site.  They are on Twitter and have an interesting idea for homebrewing…something I have been falling towards more lately, that being the small batch.  The great thing is that you can actually “try before you buy” in a way if you “think” you wanna try homebrewing.  They supply almost everything you need (you will need bleach or some sort of sanitizer) along with the equipment for $40 and you can make 1 gallon of craft beer.  If it sucks, you are not out the $200 that a 5 gallon kit can cost after buying the ingredients and equipment and if it doesn’t suck, you can turn around and make about 12 bottles of beer per batch.  How awesome is that??  I sent them a question I had and they responded that day and added some humor to my night.  Great couple and I am sure the product is great as well.  After the Irish Christmas, I plan on doing 2 small batches from them.

http://brooklynbrewshop.com

I am a huge fan of homebrewing my own tasteful delights.  I currently am priming an apple cider and a Dunkel-Weisse.  I am secondary fermenting about a gallon of the Dunkel-Weisse after adding about 4 oz of honey to it.  It should push the yeast into producing a little more of an alcohol kick and provide some sweetness.  2 weeks from now I will get to open the DW and taste it in its bottled primed glory and it just might suck, but I always enjoy making them.  If the yeast works well, I will bottle it in a couple weeks and am a little over a month away from seeing what the experiment rendered.  Again, it could suck completely…who knows!

There are a couple things that people like me forget to tell people when they ask that inevitible question “So…can I homebrew?”  Our answer is always “Yes!  Anyone can!” and it’s true.  However, there are some strict caveats that you must consider before you decide to get in on the goodness of brewing your own beers.  Whether you start out with a Mr Beer or go the way of straight extract brewing with a kit or whatever, you have to consider these things before you start doing it.

1.  You have to enjoy cleaning.  Well, not really enjoy, because I HATE it, but you have to be willing to do it.  It is tedious, monotonous and sucks.  Cleaning the equipment, boiling this and that, sanitizing everything that will touch the beer and keeping it all laid out on the counter so you don’t knock crap over while working is very important.  If you don’t clean it right and keep it clean and then sanitize it, the beer suffers.

2.  You need room to move both on brewing day and on bottling day.  I have done this in tiny kitchens and now in the largest kitchen I have had and I still find myself struggling for space.  I understand why hardcore homebrewers create an area in a garage or elsewhere to do this.  Bottling requires you be able to put your bottling bucket above the level of the bottles so that the siphoning works and it requires that you be able to lay out enough bottles for your batch.  This is one reason I moved to smaller batches until I can put a sink and some counter space in the garage.

3.  You have to be both deliberate and patient.  Being deliberate in measurements, watching temperatures and preparing things for the boil is necessary and what you end up boiling isn’t a drinkable beer, so you have to be patient.  Some beers can take 3 months or more to be ready to drink.  The quickest you will have a beer is 3 weeks or so.  Be ready to wait.

It doesn’t matter if you have a Mr Beer kit (which by the way is a great way to learn and does produce some decent results) or whether you are an all grain mash brewer with top of the line equipment.  You will have these same expectations.  The only way it changes is that the bigger your rig gets, the more you can make, experiment and clean.