Yeast starter

Brew day. I look forward to each one, increasingly so lately. The five hours spent home brewing takes my mind off everything else, focusing my minds eye on the process at hand.

Backspin Belgian Pale Ale is my first attempt at any type of Belgian style beer. Putting together the recipe took me to many websites, a few magazines, and a book or two. I noticed that the style is all over the place but that Belgian Pilsner malt was the base grain for the style. Yes, some use 2-row or others but 90% or more stayed along the Belgian Pils route. Recipes ranged from one specialty grain to as many as five. Typical suspects were Munich, Vienna, CaraMunich, CaraVienne, Biscuit, Aromatic, and even some sort of straight sugar. Some of the American centric ones used Caramel/Crystal malts as well. Hops included such types as Willamette, Goldings (U.S., East Kent, and Styrian), Saaz, Perle, and Fuggle.

This gathering of information aided in formulating a recipe. I shared the recipe with Michael Tonsmeire, who continues to be a huge help while putting up with my constant barrage of questions, and Dave, the guy that works at the local Brew & Grow. Mike mentioned that he thought my recipe was going to be too sweet, Dave backed it up and let me taste a Belgian Pale Ale he brewed with only eight ounces of CaraMunich for a five gallon batch: too sweet is right.

Grain bed after 2nd sparge

From those constructive critiques, there was one issue that I thought about the rest of the day: I had already mixed the grains, had them in my car, and was going to mill them on my way home from work, how was I to adjust my grain bill? Throw out the grains and start over? That’s a waste. Mike gave me several ideas, including using a low mash temperature to allow for the beer to finish dry. A counteractive measure to the large amount of sweet malts. I mixed that idea with the fact that I knew I placed all the specially grain in the bottle of the bucket. I carefully pulled the base malt and a bit of the specially malts from the bucket into the grain mill, added an extra pound of Belgian Pils, and placed the excess sweetness to the side.

What does this mean? Two things: first, I have no recipe to share as I am embarrassed of my original. Second, I have no idea what the final recipe was after pulling off some of the original grains. I have ideas, that will help me make the recipe so I can do the next one on all Brett.

Overall the recipe formulation was much worse than the brew day, which went off without a hitch. I did mash at 148 degrees for 90 minutes with a 60 minute boil. A yeast starter of 2L was made using WLP500 Trappist ale yeast. I pitched the yeast around 3:30pm and it was going great the next morning. Fermentation has the temperature around 63 degrees because it is in the basement. After three days I will bring it upstairs and let it rise to ambient temperature of 67 degrees which is where it will sit until it is time to bottle. Mike helped here with the fermentation schedule.

I don’t have high expectations for this beer, especially since I don’t know the final grain bill, but I feel like I did my best to pull something good out of it. More to come after bottling. Enjoy!

2012-02-07: Brought the busy fermenting beer up from the basement, where it was holding at 62 degrees. Approximately 52 hours after pitching the yeast (pitched on 2012-02-05 around 3:30pm).

2012-02-08: Temperature up to 65 degrees with three bubbles or so every two seconds. I am hoping this will aid the yeast in finishing fermentation.

Useless Fact: There are 5 million different species of insects in the world. The insect population of the world is at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. The weight of the world’s insect population exceeds that of man by a factor of twelve.

In order to keep up with my 2012 New Years Resolutions I have to keep on home brewing as I have to brew at least once every three weeks. I have two brews already under my belt so I am slightly ahead of the forecast but I am sure something unexpected will come up to slow me down, especially over the summer months; better ahead than behind.

I have my next three home brews laid out. This weekend will be a Belgian Pale Ale, the following weekend will be the same Belgian Pale Ale but 100% fermented on Brettanomyces, and finally a Saison.

In term of the second round of the Belgian pale, I plan on using Brettanomyces bruxellensis and I might, and stress might, also include some Brettanomyces claussenii. This mainly depends on the amount of time I have to make the starter. I have been talking to Michael Tonsmeire about my options, since he knows a ton about wild yeast and bacteria and, the best part, he is very giving of his time. If I want to use the claussenii strain, it is only available from White Labs year round but there cell count is much less than Wyeast for Brettanomyces cause me to have to make a double starter rather than a single. He also mentioned that a starter of Brett needs a week, obviously a double starter would need two weeks and I am just over a week out, so the bruxellensis seems to be the strain I will use.

No matter what yeast or yeasts I use, I am sure that all the beers will turn out. I have to just nail down the recipe I want to use for the Saison. Enjoy!

Useless Fact: An ant can lift 50 times its own weight. A bee can handle 300 times its own weight, which is equivalent to a human being pulling a 10 ton trailer.

It has been a while since I have come forth with thoughts on a brewing day. Rich recently mentioned his first brew day with me, which I affectionately named Rich’s Bitch. Since one of my New Year’s resolutions is to brew more and talk about it here, here we go!

Whenever I decide to brew a new style of beer, I do my homework. I check out BJCP guidelines and then scour the web for recipes. I decided that I needed some type of brown ale in repertoire. After reading the style guidelines for an American Brown Ale, I knew it was my type of beer: lots of hops.

After a week or so of screwing around, I settled on the following recipe:

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: S-05 (was lazy)
Yeast Starter: none
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.50
Original Gravity: 1.058
Final Gravity: 1.014 (estimate)
IBU: 48.8
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 21 @70*F
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 7 @70*F dry hopped

Grain Bill:
10.0# 2-Row
0.5# Crystal 60L
0.5# Crystal 40L
0.5# Wheat Malt
0.5# Chocolate Malt
0.25# Cara-Pils
0.25# Victory

Mash 152*F for 60 minutes.

Hop Bill:
0.75oz Warrior (15.0%) @ 60 min
1.00oz Amarillo (8.5%) @ 20 min
1.00oz Amarillo (8.5%) @ 0 min
2.00oz Amarillo (8.5%) dry hop for seven days

Looking at the recipe I think I might have too many different grains, especially with the Wheat, Cara-Pils, and Victory combination. Based on what I wanted to achieve, I think there is some over lap. Once I bottle, I will know for sure.

The brew day went smooth. I was joined at various times by Chuck and Dave, sharing some home brew with each made the time pass quite quickly. The beer was busy fermenting this morning. I should be trying this one out in about a month. Enjoy!

Useless Fact: The Mexican fishing spider attaches itself to a small leaf, floats across a pond as if on a raft, and from this vantage point hunts its prey, large tadpoles and small fish.

 So here’s the step by step log of my first brew day:

 9:25 Gathering equipment and ingredients (purchased grains and yeast a couple days earlier in Aurora, hops are homegrown from my friend John in Michigan).

9:35 Prepared bucket of sanitary water, 3 level tablespoons of Step 1 No Rinse cleansing powder.

 9:43 Heating strike water on stove in the kitchen to save time and propane, preparing for the batch sparge, heating 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain.

 9:56 Strike water (12.8 quarts) heated to 168-degrees then poured into mash tun to help get it to temperature.

9:59 Doughing in the grains into the mash tun, digital thermometer used to hit mash range of 150 – 154 degrees (higher temp results in increased sweetness). Stirred for about 5 minutes, hit temp target and closed mash tun for 60 minutes.

 10:05 Sanitized the Italian glass carboy, first time used. 

10:10 Weigh the hops, using 0.6-ounces of Zeus (bittering), 1.0 ounces of Cascade for aroma, and 1.0 ounces of Cascade for flavor, and added a small qty of cones from Big Scot’s backyard (Centennial).

10:26 Checked the mash tun temp, still at 153 degrees, could do an iodine test to tell if the starches have been converted, we are just are doing this step by timing.

 10:46 Downtime, had a Big Scot’s Cascadian IPA “Dirty Balls” (golf term).

 11:04 Doing a vorlauf (clearing the wort), then took first runnings and collected 1.75 gallons.

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11:13 Added 3 additional gallons of water at 190-degress for the first batch sparge, waiting 10-minutes.

 11:14 First runnings into the brew kettle.

 11:25 Completed first sparge, 3-gallons more of wort into brew kettle.

11:28 Added 3 more gallons of 192-degree water into mash turn, waiting 10-minutes.

 11:44 Last sparge in brew kettle, flame on, and approx 20-minutes till it hits full boil.

11:45 Cleaning mash tun, not that interesting, giving spent grains to friend that has a compose pile (trying to be green).

11:57 Brew kettle temp now at approx 170-degrees, watching for boil (200-degrees?) and protein break.

 12:08 Brew kettle temp now at approx +195-degrees, foam starting to signal protein break is close.  

12:11 Turn propane off for a moment to prevent over-boil, waited a minute or two, then re-ignited burner.

 12:16 First 0.6-ounce of hops (Zeus) in boil.

 12:57 Added 1.0-ounce of hops (Cascade) in boil.

1:06 Putting chiller in brew kettle, to bring to temperature.

1:15 Last hops in (another 1.0-ounce of Cascade), flame off, now for chilling process.

 1:16 Cold water running through chiller, working to get to 100-degrees, when we’ll take out second bag of hops (aroma flavor). Note: cooling water into clothes washer for re-use, my aren’t we green.

1:31 Hit 100-degrees.

 1:54 Hit 72-degrees, post boil gravity check, now at 1.045. Doesn’t make sense because we boiled off 2-gallons, hell I never took chemistry what do I know about precise measurements.

 1:55 Racking.

2: 00 Pitching the yeast.

 2:11 Yeast pitched and stopper in.

3-weeks in the fermenter, then rack into another carboy and dry-hop with 2-ounces of Cascade pellets for one week, then bottles for 2-3 weeks.

 First impression of home brewing: It’s a simple process on the surface, but precision is required and math calc’s make this not such a laid-back “hobby”. I think it was definitely a huge advantage to brew with someone that has the experience. And I like the social aspect of the whole process. The thing about beer being a communal activity becomes even more apparent in the brewing process (versus the drinking process). There’s enough waiting time between steps that sets a relaxed pace to the whole experience. And the results of the one’s labor are satisfying, though that’s yet to be confirmed via tasting of the aged product. I guess you are always happy with crafting something out raw materials. Plus it provides unequal insight into how that glass of beer tastes the way it does. I’ve just taken my next step towards Jedi-level beer geekery, and I can’t wait to taste the results and brew again. The only real question I have about home-brewing is what kind of style to brew next.

I can’t believe that 2011 is already gone. So many broken resolutions but at least I kept the most important one: 365 American Craft Beers in 365 Days. This endeavor was probably the highlight of my year, especially since I made it.

What did I lose out on? The biggest is my waist line. Bigger than ever and growing. I wanted to lose weight or at least maintain but that eroded rather quickly. I have remade that my number one 2012 goal. I would like to drop 10 pounds the first quarter of the year; trying to make my goal feasible and reasonable. I think if I break the weight loss into smaller segments, smaller goals I will find a way to achieve and thrive. I will not give up my American craft beer but I will cut back on food intake and junk food intake while trying to up the number of salads. I will keep sweets in but not on a daily basis but, hopefully, a weekly basis and under control in portion size. I am too embarrassed to list my weight but I will try to update on the weight loss/gain periodically.

Now onto the good stuff: American craft beer resolutions. I don’t have many and none are complicated.

• Home brew more. I really enjoy home brewing. I brewed last Monday and Friday. I am ready to brew again, I just need more carboys. The goal here is to get really good with a core group of beers that I can serve all the time. If I was younger and had money, I would probably pursue this as a career path.
• Visit at least five breweries I haven’t been to. This past year I sort of slacked. If it wasn’t for the summer trip, I don’t think I would have hit any up.
• Limit my American craft beer budget. American craft beer is getting more and more expensive, especially as the hipsters try to get in, trying to turn a buck. Home brewing will see a bigger piece of my budget so something has to give. This is the obvious choice.

My last resolution: spend more quality time with the family. I hope everyone has a prosperous and healthy 2012. Enjoy!

Useless Fact: North Texas State University gives a degree in “dance-band arts”.

I finally decided to enter one of my home brews into a competition. I am member of two home brew clubs and the one, Headhunters, had an India Pale Ale contest this past Friday. I enjoy reviewing and brewing IPAs; one of my favorite styles. This competition was a chance for me to put my first brewing of an Imperial IPA, 203, up for a chance to get some real feedback.

Since this was a brew club competition each beer was rated by the attendees of the meeting. Not to put anyone down in the brew club but the only person’s opinion that mattered to me was Kevin’s. Why? He is a certified judge that I value his thoughts. He rated 203 a 38. I didn’t think that was to shabby for my first contest with my own recipe.

After the competition was over and because Kevin was sitting next to me, I monopolized his time for 30 minutes to determine what he believes could make the beer better. He shared a few good tips that will go into the beer the next time I brew it.

I am glad I entered the contest, not for the second place overall finish, which is cool, but for the input that I received from Kevin. Enjoy!

Useless Fact: The word “turnpike” originated in the days when toll collectors were armed with pikes, long-handled weapons to prevent travelers who refused to pay the tariff from using their roads.

Since this is my first sour and my beer names, so far, have all been related to my experiences of caddying, Bad Tipper follows suite. I never liked bad tippers as they usually worked you harder, took longer, and then stiffed you at the end of the round. Needless to say there were loops that I “soured” upon when I heard their names and did everything in my power to avoid them. So Bad Tipper is my homage to the cheap asses of the world.

I have been talking to Mike at The Mad Fermentationist for a while picking his brain. He has been super helpful and I hope this beer is somewhere near as successful as all the sours he brews up. I have also asked and been lurking on HomeBrewTalk.com, a great set of home brewing forums, to see what others have been doing. All this fueled the bug (no pun intended) to brew a sour.

Per Mike’s suggestion, as he likes very sour beer, I pitched the bugs with the normal yeast on brew day (this past Sunday) with the hopes of pushing the sourness up probably past the level that an Oud Bruin should be, but heck, it is my beer and this is what I want, lol. I used a English yeast from White Labs and Wyeast Roeselliere blend. I made a one gallon yeast starter (actually about a liter short of what Mr. Malty calculator suggested, but that was the limit of my fermenting vessel.

The brew day went well, I even cooled my wort with my chiller in the laundry room, as I didn’t want the outdoor hose to freeze, and drained all the water straight into the washing machine. Several hours later I could see that the yeast was just beginning to show and by morning a full krausen was on.

Now the patient part begins. I plan on splitting up the beer and aging some on different types of fruits (cherries, blackberries, and possibly others) while keeping at least one gallon clean as a test case. The beer should be ready in 9 to 12 months and need to be on the fruit for another 2 to 6 months.

If I can talk my wife into allowing me to get the glass fermentors, I would like to brew another three or so sours in the next year. Her argument is that I have no idea if these will turn out and it takes such a long time to know. Good point but I never knew if my first brew day would be a success. Enjoy!

Useless Fact: There are more people in New York City than there are in the states of Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Hawaii, North Dakota, Delaware and New Mexico combined.

Note: I didn’t post the recipe as I took straight from Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer. My next sour will be of my own invention.

I brewed 203 about seven weeks ago as I let it sit in primary for four weeks, then dry hopped for a week, and two weeks bottle conditioning. I shared a bomber with Chuck who happened to be over to pick up grains from today’s brew day, which I will comment on tomorrow. 203 is dry hopped with Amarillo and Galaxy hops.

The beer came out as I imagined and was quite drinkable in spite of a high ABV and IBU values. Chuck liked it which also makes me happy to hear a fellow home brewer appreciates my hard work.

Close to the finish of this beer I brought up the fact that I had also aged a gallon of this beer on an oak spiral. Chuck was game. In spite of the beer being cellar temperature, this beer turned out fantastic. Better than I expected. Darker in color and actually smoother in the finish than the non-oak version, Oaked 203 is my new favorite home brew. Enjoy!

Useless Fact: Stage bows were originally devised as a way for actors to thank the audience. The audience would or would not acknowledge each of the actors in turn, depending on how much they enjoyed the performances.

2nd Year Centennial Hop on 2011-04-23

This past week in Chicagoland has not been nice, least of all to the hop plants. The centennial has grown slowly for about the past 10 days as the temperature hasn’t gone above 50 degrees and it has been cloudy, damp, and rainy. Just a wonderful Midwestern mix for the spring.

In spite of the slow down, the early warmth, has helped the longer bines to get to the two foot range already. I think I will be ready for some twine shortly to start training them up. As you can see in one of the smaller pictures below, I cut off enough bines to get me down to five: no need in letting energy being wasted by the plant in bines that I would cut off eventually anyway. I plan on allowing three bines to grow all season. Two more will have to go.

In the last picture below you can see the early beginnings of my new Mt. Hood plant. Maybe an inch of growth. I don’t expect this plant to grow more than 15 feet or so this year since it is a first year; spreading it’s roots and establishing itself will be top priority.

It seems like it should be a little warmer this week in Chicago, so I am hoping it will drop kick both plants into some more growth. Enjoy!

Useless Fact: The words “naked” and “nude” are not the same. Naked implies unprotected. Nude means unclothed.

Centennial trimming of bines

Mt. Hood beginnings.

2nd Year Centennial Hop on 2011-04-17

Last Sunday in Chicagoland was close to 90 degrees: my hop plant loved it! I brewed two batches of beer: Dirty Balls Dark India Pale Ale and Honey Pot Pale Ale. Chuck was over to shoot the shit and, per my request, brought me over a clipping of his Mt. Hood hops that we planted after the brew day.

The brew day went fine with both beers already done fermenting and the complete brew day taking about 6.5 hours for both batches. Not bad. I cool my wort in my utility sink, which usually takes about 25 minutes with me vigorously shaking the brew kettle every few minutes. Chuck was the extra set of hands I never had: he twirled the pot by the handle in the ice bath, almost constantly, and wort was down to temp in 17 minutes. Nice!

But this write is about the hop plant out back. In the last week it went from what I had last week to more than double the size this week. My strongest bines are now in the 14 inch range, if not longer.

Earlier I brought up last Sunday’s weather, today’s morning temperature was in the 30s. We have had some harsh weather this week: rain, storms, cold, etc and it seems to have stunted the hop plant a touch as most of the growth seemed to come earlier in the week. Heck, I think it grew a good two inches last Sunday. Ladies Day India Pale Ale will be in the brew kettle shortly. Enjoy!

Useless Fact: Undertakers report that human bodies do not deteriorate as quickly as they used to. The reason for this, they believe, is that the modern diet contains so many preservatives that these chemicals tend to prevent the body from decomposing too quickly after death.