Parti!

Well partigyle at least. My latest brew day encompassed 2 firsts. It was my first attempt at a barleywine and my first partigyle brew session. Partigyle brewing is when you take the first runnings of the mash to make a large beer and then use the second runnings of the mash to make a smaller beer. I made an ESB with the second runnings. The recipe I followed called for 28 pounds of grain in the mash tun. As you can see below, my system tops out at around 23 pounds of grain.

At capacity

Thankfully I was able to get beersmith up and running again for this brew. It was very helpful in making the adjustments to the recipe. Because my mash tun was not large enough to make the beers as called for, my partigyle brew actually used the first and half of the second runnings for the barleywine and the other half of the second runnings and the third runnings for the ESB. In order to give the ESB some additional character I steeped a pound of crystal malt while it was coming to a boil. One issue I ran into during brew day was a place to store all of the wort for the ESB while I was boiling the barleywine. I will need to get another big kettle.

A little ESB here, a little there...

Because I had to run even more water through the grains to get the amount I needed to boil it made the ESB a little watered down. I was able to do some calculations taking my pre-boil gravity into account and I added some dry malt extract to get the gravity to where I needed it. I managed to hit the expected original gravity exactly and it was definitely a highlight of the day.

Overall, I enjoyed doing the partigyle, but I definitely need some additional equipment to make it go a little smoother (i.e. another kettle). It was very fun to see these beers ferment like crazy after I added the yeast. The barleywine nearly bubbled through the air lock, but the krausen receded just in time. I have a long road ahead with the barleywine. It has a couple months of oak aging ahead of it, but I have a feeling the wait will definitely be worth it.

Tis the Season!

[Apparently I never posted this article. I found it on the my system. It still has the original time stamp so I figured it wouldn't hurt to get it up here.]

Time to brew that pumpkin beer... for Thanksgiving... Ok fine. So it's not the season, but it is a season and that calls for a special beer. This is the first time I have brewed with a non brewing ingredient. This beer called for about 3.5 pounds of pumpkin to be added to the mash. However, after talking with the fine folks at the homebrew store, I was persuaded to just add the pumpkin to the boil. This let me avoid a problem that plagues a lot of pumpkin mashes... a stuck sparge.

This brew went smoothly despite the fact that I didn't hit my numbers. The beer ended up a bit low on starting gravity. This was in part because I just kind of went for it with this recipe. The computer that I had Beersmith running on has died. So I am in the dark with my brewing software. For this recipe I tried to make the adjustments to my system without any software and I didn't do a very good job. Hopefully, it will turn out alright.

Just Dumb...

Last night I cleaned out the beer line that the Guinea Pig IPA was on and hooked up the Haus Pale Ale. Only problem was the pale ale was flat. It turns out that I never turned on the gas when I put the pale ale in the keezer. Looks like having a full tap list is set back again.

Cut Me! I'm Blind!

Yesterday I was tweaking my IPA recipe in preparation to brew today. The next morning our laptop decided to stop working. So I had a decision to make. I could put off my brew day and try to salvage the laptop that has Beersmith installed on it or I could just go for it and make some beer. Beer always wins.

I pretty much guessed at everything involved in today's brew day. The only thing that was right was the amount of ingredients and my hop schedule. I guessed at my mash thickness, mash water temps and sparging water. I nailed my mash temperature. I settled right in at 155 degrees. I was able to do this by drawing on my experience from my first three all grain beers (vanilla stout and pale ale didn't get a write up here because I am lazy). I'm not sure if I messed up my mash thickness or sparge water (or both), but I didn't end up with enough beer in the fermenter.

In the end, the wort looked and smelled amazing. The transition to all grain has gone wonderfully. I expected to take a step back in quality for the first few beers, but I've only had one potential dud (pale ale). I haven't tasted it yet and if it turns out poorly I can always blame it on my friend who brewed with me that day.

Commence All Grain!

Yesterday I did my first all grain brew! This has been the reason for my lack of brewing recently. I have been saving money to make the switch to all grain. This couldn't have come at a better time because I have nearly drained the keezer dry (something I thought wouldn't happen once it was full). For my first all grain brew I decided to get a recipe kit and eliminate one possible source of error with me getting the wrong grains or some other nonsense. The kit I chose was Dawson's Multigrain Red from Northern Brewer. This should be a nice beer for the summer and be a quick addition to the keezer.

The brew day did not start off well. I could not find one of the pieces of the copper manifold I made for my mash tun. After an hour of searching I found the tube and the brewday officially started. I preheated the mash tun with some hot water out of the tap and drained it into my sanitizer bucket to have sanitizer for my fermenter. While the mash tun was preheating, I brought some water up to mash temperature on the stove with a little help from a heatstick. Beersmith proved invaluable to helping me figure out temperatures.

When I had my mash water at the right temperature, I poured it into the mash tun. I then added all of the grain for the recipe and gave it a little stir to make sure I didn't have any dough balls. I checked the temperature of the mash and I hit my mash temp on the first try! I was thrilled and amazed. I put the lid on the cooler and set the timer for 60 minutes. After the timer went off I opened up the mash tun to a wonderful aroma. I stuck my thermometer in the mash and I had only lost 1 degree over the mash.

The mash

I drained the mash tun and did a batch sparge with some water I was heating up during the mash. Once I had collected all the wort I needed (according to Beersmith) I started to bring it to a boil. With the heatstick and the stove I was able to bring almost 7 gallons of wort to a boil. The stove was then able to maintain the boil after I pulled the heatstick out. The boil went smoothly and I transferred into the fermenter with no issues.

Overall, this was a wonderful experience. It was probably my smoothest brew day to date. I was not expecting that to be the case considering I was adding a whole new component to my brew day. I didn't take a pre-boil gravity reading so I am not sure what my efficiency is, but I nailed my original gravity so I am guessing it is near the 75% that Beersmith used to calculate everything.

Keezer Improvements

It's been awhile since I have posted. That's because I haven't done much brewing. I need to hurry up and do that because I have nothing in the pipeline now. I just stopped in to mention a couple updates I've made to the Keezer.

First up is the new tap handles. My wife gave me these for Christmas. The wooden handles are branded with "Cedar Rose Brewing" across them. Definitely gives the keezer some great character (especially compared to the standard plastic handles). So far I have just had simple print outs to say what beers are on tap, but as I have more time


The other addition to the keezer was a drip tray. I made wooden supports for the drip tray that are attached to the keezer by magnets. The drip tray is then attached to the supports using velcro. I used rare earth magnets for the supports. I have had at least a couple full beers sitting on the drip tray without it moving at all. It is very sturdy.


Stay tuned to the blog. There are a few new gear posts coming. Then back to brewing!