24 Hours, 2 Brews

Following a pretty nasty snow/ice storm, I was finally able to get to my local homebrew shop to pick up some ingredients. Within 24 hours I had 2 beers in the fermenter. This was crucial because I am now down to 1 beer on tap, 2 beers carbonating, and nothing in the pipeline.

First up was the next reincarnation of my Guinea Pig IPA. Due to a computer crash and some mismanagement of paper copies I had no record of my previous recipe. So I had to recreate the recipe to the best of my ability then make the changes I thought could help the next version. Unfortunately the homebrew shop did not have the hops I wanted to use so I subbed the zythos (more on this hop in a future post) hop for both amarillo and simcoe. I pitched the yeast before I went to bed and got together what I would need for the brew in the morning.

The second beer I was making was my first attempt at Mike McDole's Janet's Brown Ale recipe. I had a couple friends over who wanted to see the brewing process. It's always nice to have someone else around to mill 14 pounds of grain. This was the first time I had trouble hitting my mash temps. First I was too low then made adjustments to be too high and finally got it close enough. I ended up being slightly low on my starting gravity for this beer but everything else went smoothly. The difference in gravity shouldn't make too much of an impact on the finished beer.

Both of these beers are now bubbling away in the basement closet. The IPA took a little longer than normal to get started. I will be very happy in a few weeks when these beers finish and I can put them on tap after what we have now is drained during our yearly Super Bowl party.

Kegging Day

Ready to be cleaned!

Today was one of the less fun brewing days. I cleaned three kegs and filled two. On the bright side, this means that I have two more beers that will be ready to drink soon. I kegged the Vanilla Stout and the Pink Death Pale. The Vanilla Stout is a recipe that I have close to perfected. I am now dialing in the right amount of vanilla to add. The last iteration had a little too much due to some clumsiness and me spilling some extra vanilla extract into the keg. This time I added the intended amount and hopefully it will be what we are looking for.

The Pink Death Pale is an original recipe of mine. It is a pale ale made with a bit of rye. It is hopped with all Cascade hops. It needs some tweaking, but it definitely has potential. The name comes from the fact that I was doing a 2.5 gallon batch using my 10 gallon cooler mash tun. I was worried about temp loss with so much headspace and so I made an artificial top for the mash tun out of pink foam board insulation. I cut it to size, covered it in foil and set it on top of the mash. The name serves warning to anyone who drinks it that I may be killing them slowly with each pint (even though the foil kept the mash from touching the insulation).

New Toys

I've had a couple new brewery toys to play with for the last couple months. The first is a grain mill. I was having an issue getting a consistent grain crush from the various places I was shopping at to purchase my ingredients. After doing some research I decided to go with the Barley Crusher. It seemed to provide the most bang for my buck. With the addition of a 5 gallon bucket, the grain mill was ready to go. It offers the ability to crush the grain with a drill, but so far I have just been crushing it by hand. Turning the crank before brew day is a nice workout and gives me something to do while my strike water is heating.

The newest toy is a refractometer. I have only had this for one and a half batches so far and already I love it. Taking pre-fermentation gravity readings is now so fast and easy that I can't help but do them. It also helps me track my progress pre and post boil. I know whether or not I need to add some extract to help meet my target original gravity. I have also been taking readings post fermentation along with my hydrometer in order to test some of the refractometer correction equations that could allow me to take readings post fermentation.

Stay tuned for some big changes coming. I am about to have an onslaught of new toys!

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.