Brews and Blues Beer and Smokin’ Blues

August Brew Day

It wasn't terribly hot today. The mercury didn't climb out of the low 80s and the sun was in and out behind some occasional clouds. Today's brew was a chocolate oatmeal stout (recipe is in the Log/Recipes section) that I have been wanting to brew for a long time. I have never brewed with chocolate or oatmeal, so this beer is going to be a surprise in some way or another no matter how it comes out.

In this photo, I'm getting ready to run the grains through the barley crusher with the help of my 3/8" drill to turn the mill. The drill allows me to crush 13 pounds of grain in just a few minutes...

What would brew day be like without some tunes? I like to kick it old-school with the world's mostbaddestass iPod dock and a little Stevie Ray Vaughan...

Today we mashed in at with four gallons of water at 155° for 60 minutes and then ran two batch sparges...

This photo shows the first runnings from the mash. I wish you could have taken a whiff of this concentrated wort as it was coming out of the tun. It had the most wonderful roasted smell...

After the hops and other ingredients had been added and the boil completed, it was time to chill the wort. This is actually my biggest brew day problem at this point. I need to chill the wort down to 70° as quickly as possible (because 70° is my fermentation temperature). When the ground water coming out of the hose is 83°, getting down to 70° can be a problem. Today, I broke the cooling stage up into two sections...

I used the immersion chiller and the regular garden hose to bring the wort temperature down to about 120° and then I switched over to an ice water recirculation pump system to get it down to 70°. People often ask me why it's important to chill the beer quickly and I haven't been able to SHOW them why up until today. See the following photo...

This is the blonde ale that I brewed at the end of July. As you can see, it's cloudy! That's a phenomenon called "Chill Haze" that occurs when you chill a beer that didn't get cooled quickly enough on brew day. The beer tastes fine... it's just cloudy. I used irish moss in that brew to help prevent that, but I had a big problem cooling that beer down to 70°. I didn't have the ice water recirculation system at that time. I'm also switching to Whirlfloc as my primary clearing agent, but I didn't use it on today's stout. You can't tell if a stout is clear or not by looking at it usually, so I just used the irish moss. I'll use the Whirlfloc on my next brew, whatever it may be...

Oh well... I got 5.5 gallons in the fermenter with an original gravity of 1.060. It's going to ferment in primary for 14 days in then for 28 more in secondary before it goes into bottles for 8 weeks. It's gonna be a while until we taste this one. I'll definitely brew one or two more batches before we even crack the top on one of these...

I'm not sure what I want to brew next.  Someone please make  some suggestions...