IPA Recipe Creation

I've started to create my own IPA recipe. I am doing this to create a good beer on my own and to learn more about what flavors the different ingredients impart in the beer. However, I got off to a bad start with this beer by accidentally getting crystal 60 instead of crystal 40. So my IPA is a little darker than it should be, but I don't know enough to understand how that will change the flavor.

The brew was very smooth and I didn't have any issues except with a new hop bag I was trying out. The bag is over a foot long and maybe 2-3 inches wide. It is made of very fine mesh and I thought it would work well for the pellet hops I use. However the bag is not wide enough. The hops just soaked up water and were stuck in the end of the bag. I ended up only putting my bittering hops in the bag and the rest went straight in the boil kettle. I am a little worried that I did not get full utilization of the hops, but I won't know for sure until I drink the finished beer. The gravity sample had a nice bittering to it though so I could be alright.

The first version of my recipe is below. I will be tweaking it as I go forward to try to make a better beer. My LHBS did not have an alpha acid percentage for the Amarillo hops.

8 lb Gold LME

1 lb Crystal 40 60

1 oz Columbus (14.4%) - 60 min

1 oz Amarillo - 45 min

0.5 oz Amarillo - 20 min

0.5 oz Amarillo - 5 min

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Freezer + Kegs = Keezer!

After months of looking at a lot of keezer threads over at Hombrewtalk.com I finally took the plunge and decided to build one of my own. I decided to go with a collar rather than a tower because I didn't want to deal with cutting through the lid of the freezer. I received a lot of inspiration from this design. The addition of a door on the front of the keezer gives the benefits of the tower with the convenience of a collar. The door minimizes the additional height a keg must be lifted in order to get it into the keezer.

I found a killer deal on kegs on Craigslist. Then ordered a custom kit from KegConnections. I have a dual regulator with one leading to a 3-way manifold for the taps. This gives me four CO₂ lines so I can carbonate a keg while having 3 others tapped. This way I will have a keg ready to go when one blows. The freezer is a 9 cubic feet Frigidaire that I got from Lowes. It can hold 6 kegs with plenty of space for the CO₂ tank.

I apparently forgot to take pictures in the beginning of the build so you'll just have to imagine the first few steps. First I built a base collar out of cedar 2x2s. It is probably good that I don't have pictures of this because my cuts were not pretty and required quite a bit of touch up. After I had the base collar, I built 3/4 of the upper collar out of cedar 2x6s. I put the back wall and sides together then glued the base collar and upper collar together with liquid nails.

Once I had the rigid portion of the collar built, I drilled out the holes for the taps and added the door to the collar. I carved out a portion of the side wall to hide the hinge of the door. It gives the keezer a slightly cleaner look.

Door slightly open

The door has a slight sag when fully open, but that is expected. I did have a problem with the door staying shut. I added a latch to keep the door pressed against the foam tape to minimize air leaks. I added the foam tape on both edges of the door to help keep the freezer more efficient.

Door latch

I attached the collar to the top of the freezer with silicone. I then started installing the hardware. This step actually gave me some problems. The faucet on the far right just did not want to sit properly. This resulted in me spraying sanitizer all over the front of the keezer because it was coming out of the sides of the faucet. After taking it apart and putting it together a few times, I finally got it to sit properly.

Starting to look like a keezer.

I reattached the keezer lid by putting the hinges onto the collar. I then installed the temperature controller into the keezer. I cut the main power to the freezer and wired the controller in to turn it on and off in order to keep the freezer above freezing. Surprisingly, this was probably the easiest part of the whole build. I was expecting issues with the controller.

Keezer!

I had two kegs ready to go into the keezer. The Caribou Slobber and vanilla stout. After a few days of waiting I was finally able to pour some beer!

mmm beer...

I had the double brew day to get the keezer filled at full capacity. The pale ale should be a quick finisher. It will be great to have all three taps pouring. Let me know if you have questions or want more pictures of anything!

Big Brew Day

Before

Today was a first. The first time I've done a double brew day. I needed to kick start the pipeline to get me through the winter. The day started with a trip to the brew store to pick up a box of supplies.

First up was EdWort's Haus Pale Ale. I've made this beer before so it was supposed to be the easy warm up for the day. However, I messed up when writing my list of things to get at the store and I came home with 1 oz too few of hops. Thankfully, I had a half ounce each of Fuggles and Kent Goldings in the fridge that needed a home. I subbed these in to help with the bittering in order to try to keep the aroma coming from the Cascade hops.

After a quick cleaning turnaround I had the water heating up in the brew kettle to steep the grains for my next beer. I am branching out into a new style and doing a holiday spiced beer. I got the recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. Jamil's Ol' Yule Loggy recipe is by far the biggest beer I've brewed with an expected original gravity of 1.090.

I had a little boil over with this beer. I looked away for a second before I heard the sound of wort hitting the stove. Thankfully I caught it before it got too bad. Only had a minor clean up to do. It was my first boil over in almost a year. I guess I got a little cocky with that part of my process. The only other thing that could be a problem with this beer is the amount of spice added to the beer. The wort smelled like it had a good amount of spice in it when it was going into the fermentor. It will be interesting to see how that translates into the finished beer.

After

The one issue I still need to figure out is my hydrometer. Both of these beers had an original gravity reading of about 20 points too low. After staring at the fermentors for awhile I am beginning to wonder if i am not getting the wort and additional water mixed together well enough. I think it might be a case of the water sitting on top of the wort. This is something I need to pay attention to in my next brew.

New Stove = Fail

After a long brewing hiatus due to moving into our first house, I finally was able to brew this week. Unfortunately, I didn't realize how weak our new stove is. It took me 2.5 hours to get to a boil, and I only managed that after the folks on the HomebrewTalk forums gave me the idea to straddle the brew pot between 2 burners. It is very obvious that I need to invest in a turkey fryer or some other kind of propane burner.

The brew was the Caribou Slobber kit from Northern Brewer. I am guessing it is a clone of Moose Drool which is a great beer. Apart from the stove issues, this brew was very easy. It is also the first 5 gallon batch I have done in almost a year. Everything was 2.5 gallon batches before this one. One of the great features of the new house is a closet beneath the stairs going into the basement that maintains a steady temperature of 65 degrees. The caribou slobber is bubbling happily away in there right now.

I also have a big project coming up that will greatly improve moral around the house. Stay tuned for details.

EdWort's Haus Pale Ale

After a brewless May, I got back to it tonight with Edwort's Haus Pale Ale. At least it was close to Edwort's creation. I tweaked things due to the amount I could buy at the LHBS. For example, I tweaked the hops to use the whole ounce I bought so I didn't have to hold on to a quarter of an ounce. Here is what I ended up with for my 2.5 gallon batch:

• 3 lb golden light LME
• 1 lb munich LME
• 6 oz crystal 10 - steeped
• 0.5 oz Cascade - 60 min.
• 0.3 oz Cascade - 30 min.
• 0.1 oz Cascade - 15 min.
• 0.1 oz Cascade - 5 min.
• Nottingham yeast

I'm pretty sure that keeping the last two hop addition separate was pointless given how small they were. I have high hopes for this beer though. All told it only cost about $13 for the ingredients so it would be a welcome addition to the steady lineup. The low cost of this brew should let me get another one in this month.

Overall, the brew went very smoothly. I did forget to take an OG reading. I am really bad about that. I get so focused on having the fermenter sanitized and everything clean that I don't remember until a couple hours later. I need to mark on my fermenters to remind me to take the reading.

Bottling the Hop Hammer

Bottled a couple gallons of Hop Hammer tonight. It tasted much better than when I moved it to secondary before dry hopping. There was almost an inch and a half of hop matter in the bottom of the fermenter when I racked it into the bottling bucket. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it. I also had a final gravity reading of 1.014 which is nine points higher than the previous reading I took. I am not sure what happened last time, but I trust this reading a little more because it is close to what I expected.

Bottling is getting easier and easier the more I do it. I put a towel down to work over this time and that made clean up a breeze. I also worked to make sure the priming sugar was thoroughly mixed throughout the beer. The vanilla stout had some carbonating inconsistencies.

Dry Hopping!

The Hop Hammer was ready to be dry hopped! Tonight I transferred it to secondary and added about 3 ounces of hops (after I accidentally spilled about .5 ounce that was supposed to go in also). The trub at the bottom of the fermenter was so thick. It was just a sludge when I was pouring it out. It moved only a little bit faster than molasses. Currently some Oxi-clean is working hard on getting all the crud off the sides of the fermenter so I don't have to work as much. I do need to figure out how to get all the crap out of the inside of the blow off hose.

It may be time to test my hydrometer again. I got a reading of 1.011 after racking the beer. That would mean I've already overshot my gravity by 12 points (and this after I overshot it by 6 points). By a rough calculation in my head that would put the beer around 10% ABV. The yeast took of after I added it. I was fully expecting a slow start based on the starting gravity of the beer, but by the next morning it was bubbling like crazy.

The beer tasted very hoppy (duh). Definitely needs to mellow out some, which it should. I'm also a little worried that the beer may have fermented out too much to support the amount of hops that are present. There may not be enough residual sweetness to balance the hops, but I will just have to wait and see.

Hop Hammer!

Finally back to brewing tonight! I brewed Jamil's Hop Hammer from Brewing Classic Styles. His recipe is essentially a clone recipe for Russian River's Pliny the Elder. After a couple months of searching I got my hands on a pint of Pliny and it was amazing. That basically made the decision of my next brew for me.

Steeping the grains

The brew was pretty uneventful. I am very happy that I am not having issues with process anymore. The only real issues for this brew occurred while picking up my ingredients. I couldn't get the amber malt extract that I needed. After talking it over with the folks at the LHBS I picked up some pilsner malt extract and added some crystal 40 to make up the difference. I also couldn't get simcoe hops. I substituted chinook for these.

Boiling away

I also had a couple of firsts for this beer. I finally was able to use my wort chiller. I got the correct adapter for my kitchen faucet today. I also sliced up my hands pretty badly on the threads. Somehow I had no blood though. It did speed up my cooling! I went from boiling to pitching temps in about 20 minutes. I think next time I am going to use the water to create an ice bath with the frozen 20 oz pop bottles I made. That should speed it up even more, and I won't feel like I am wasting as much water. I also did a 90 minute boil for the first time. I managed to get my water levels correct to make up for the extra evaporation. I did overshoot my gravity slightly, but I think this is due in part to just making up the crystal 40 fix for the malt extract.

patience.... patience....

I am really looking forward to this beer. I need to dry hop this beer in a few days. I tasted the wort after the boil for the first time. It was interesting. My mouth was filled with incredible sweetness followed by an intense bitterness. I am very curious to see the changes in the taste. Hopefully I can remember what it was like at this stage.

Cost Per Pint

I have had issues with time and money for brewing lately. All that I've had going on is waiting for the Vanilla Stout to fully carbonate so we can enjoy this beer. After this weekend I should be able to brew again (PLEASE). In the meantime, I have wasted some time and come up with a new little feature for the blog.

On the left there is a new box that will now hold my current cost per pint. I will never post how much I've actually spent because that could get me in trouble down the road. I am keeping the total to myself, but sharing this will be fun. Although it isn't my focus or reason for brewing, it shouldn't be hard to stay below the $4 or $5 they charge at the bars (as long as I never buy any really big toys). It is just an interesting thing to track.

Bottle Washing... ugh

After bottling the vanilla stout, I realized I have once again accumulated a lot of bottles that need labels removed or yeast brushed out. I started by soaking all the bottles to soften up the labels and the yeast. Thankfully this soak will make the labels basically peel off without tearing or leaving behind too much glue. I don't mind the process of getting all the labels off.

Unfortunately, I still have to use my bottle brush to get all this yeast scraped out. I hate trying to get the bottle brush in and out of the bottles. It just flings water and dead yeast all over the me and the kitchen. Time to start a kegging fund...

Bottling Day!!

I was finally able to bottle my vanilla stout. We've had numerous house guests and spent some time sick. I am finally starting to get my bottling process worked out. I had the fewest amount of spilled beer on the kitchen floor to date. Definitely made clean up easier and my wife happier. The beer smelled and tasted great. I am really looking forward to drinking this one.

Busy Busy Week

This week has been crazy. We've had visitors and are getting ready for more visitors. Through it all I managed to find the time to move my Vanilla Stout to secondary to add the vanilla. The beer had a hot alcohol element to it. This should mellow out as it ages.

I am also working on my next incantation of my special bitter. I may do a double brew day and do two versions at once. I have a couple ideas on how to improve my recipe. I will decide how to move forward after tasting my first version. It will be ready to drink in a couple days.

Finally Stout!

I finally got around to brewing the stout that has been on my list for a couple months. It was the best brew day I've ever had. Everything went smoothly and I didn't forget anything! I overshot my gravity slightly, but that was due to my scaling of the recipe. It was only 3 points so it shouldn't be a big deal. I am really looking forward to this beer. The wort smelled so very delicious.

I also made my first yeast starter for this beer. Figured I would try it out since I could only get a propagator pack of the yeast I needed from the LHBS. I was nervous that I would somehow mess it up, but my fears were washed away when I woke up this morning and the stout was bubbling away intensely.

I'll have updates on this one when it is time to rack onto the vanilla.

New Toys!

Real life has gotten in the way of updating the blog, but I come bearing good news! I have a couple new brew toys! I bought a new thermometer which was desperately needed. I also got an immersion chiller. Until I can get some fermentation temperature control figured out the immersion chiller will have a huge effect on the quality of my beer. I will now be able to get the wort down to pitching temperature quickly. No more making tons of ice and sitting around for an hour+ to get the wort to cool.

The cheapest thing I purchased was a little pvc elbow from Lowes for $0.87.

When bottling by myself I have always had difficulty tipping the bucket to get the end of the wort out. Trying to keep the bucket balanced while filling bottles is just asking for disaster. The elbow acts as a dip tube and gets close to the bottom of the bucket. That will still pull the wort out without needing to tip the bucket.

When I bottled my special bitter last night the elbow worked like a charm. No tipping the bucket. It only left a few ounces of beer in the bucket as well as a little crud that came through in the siphon.

Computing Brews

I finally installed the copy of Beersmith that I got awhile ago. I used the program to help create by first basic recipe. I really like that it has the BJCP styles built in to it. It was a convenient reference while creating the recipe. It has tasting notes for the styles and helps you target the correct gravities, IBUs, etc. Prior to installing Beersmith I had an idea of what my better bitter recipe would look like. I was off on my gravities and IBUs. Beersmith helped me fix those issues.

Beersmith also allows you to create an inventory and shopping lists. I have started creating my (small) inventory. It will be convenient for me because my brew stuff is not organized well due to space constraints in my apartment. I am still working on solutions for this problem. The shopping lists can be created with a single click from the recipe you are planning to brew. With one more click you can add the shopping list to your inventory after purchasing everything. Very convenient features for me.

I still have a lot to learn in Beersmith. I will especially use it to more of it's capacity when I go all grain (someday). Right now it is more of a recipe creation/management system for me.

Brew Day - 1/9/10

I had my first brew day of the new year on Saturday. Everything went well except I forgot to take the original gravity measurement. This brew was my first original recipe. I am trying to make a special bitter. The recipe I created is very simple to start. I wanted to have a base that I would be able to specialize. I already have a couple ideas on how to improve it after reading more about the style. The recipe is for a 2.5 gallon batch.

Special Bitter Variation #1
3 lb Gold LME
.75 oz Kent Goldings (4.6%) - 60 min
.25 oz Kent Goldings (4.6%) - 15 min
Wyeast 1098 British Ale Yeast

I also had a friend over and taught him how to homebrew. It went really well and he was really excited about the process. I may have found a brew partner!