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...
7/26/09 – Brew Day
I brewed a 5-gallon batch of a blonde ale this afternoon (see LOG link on the right if you want the details of the recipe and other stuff). This was my first opportunity to use the Igloo 5-gallon water cooler that I converted to a mash tun. Everything worked nicely and the cooler held my mash at the proper temperatures for 75 minutes with the use of the foam insulation block in place. I lost less than 1 degree during the 75 minute mash.
This photo shows the stainless steel braid manifold in this mash tun. This braid worked really well and the vorlauf process seems to be a lot quicker with this braid compared to the copper tubing manifold in my other MLT.
I originally intended to bottle the beer from my last brew today, but I was too hot and tired after I finished brewing to do that, so I might let that amber ale sit for another week in the secondary fermenter. I'm gonna let today's brew ferment in primary for 14 days and then bottle it with no secondary fermentation. I guess I could let the amber sit for two more weeks and bottle them both on the same day. The amber would probably benefit from the extra aging, so we'll just see what happens.
Building an Immersion Chiller
An immersion chiller is a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment to build, and it's a great way to cool your hot wort down to pitching temperature in a hurry. Here's the list of equipment I used to build this chiller:
50' of 1/2" copper refrigeration tubing ($58)
(4) 1/2" 90 degree copper elbows (less than $1.00 each)
10' of plastic hose (less than $10)
Brass female hose connector (about $4)
2 hose clamps (about $2)
Some lead free solder
Some acid paste flux
In total, this build costs less than $80, and the copper tubing can be purchased for a good bit less from http://www.coppertubingsales.com if you want to order it online. As of this writing, they sell a 50' roll of 1/2 inch tubing for $31 plus shipping, which I think to my address is about $13, so there is a rather significant savings there that would knock $14 off this build and bring it down to about $65 in total.
To get started on this build, I got out my brew kettle to find out how long my vertical pieces needed to be to clear the top of the pot. I cut one piece long enough to reach the bottom of the pot and clear the top by 4 or 5 inches. I cut another piece about the same length to make the second vertical piece and the two turn-out pieces.
The next step is to coil the copper tubing around something round like a corny keg, paint cans, or something else relatively close to that size. I used an old plastic dish washing powder bucket that I found in the basement. With 1/2" copper tubing, you will need an extra set of hands to help you form this coil.
Once the coil is formed, you will need to solder on the copper elbows and the vertical pieces of the tubing. You will also need to solder on the turn-out tubes at the top. Once those connections are made, use hose clamps to attach your plastic hose.
For my input hose, I used a shorter piece (about 14" or so) and used a hose clamp to fasten my female hose fitting for connection to the garden hose. Attach the second piece of hose to the output tube. My output hose is about 10' long so I can position it to drain wherever I want it to without any trouble.
After everything is put together, test the chiller for leaks by hooking up a garden hose and letting water flow through it. You should have no leaks at any of the soldered or hose clamp joints. If you have no leaks, put a crimp in the output hose to build up some pressure inside the chiller and make sure you have no leaks under pressure. If you have no leaks, you are ready to go! If you have any leaks, you might need to tighten your hose clamps or re-work the soldered joints.
HERE is a great video on YouTube that shows the process of making a chiller... I used this concept for building mine...
Thinking Out Loud – All Grain Brewing
My re-entry to the home brewing hobby has come with a lot of reading and studying concepts. When I brewed in the past, I always made malt extract recipes and used some minor grains by steeping them for 30 minutes or so before the boil. I never challenged myself to consider all-grain brewing. I think I had convinced myself that extract brewing was good enough, and didn't care to spend the extra time and effort to work with all-grain recipes. Extract brewing does make excellent beers, but I'm beginning to realize that truly fantastic beers can be made by all-grain brewing. I have been trying to come up with a pros and cons list of moving into all-grain brewing, and here is what I have come up with so far:
Cons:
- Additional time involved to mash grains (setup / mash / tear down / cleanup)
- Additional equipment costs (mash tun / grain mill)
Pros:
- Total control over flavor and details of the beer and the ability to create flavors and styles of beer that aren't easily achieved with extracts
- Creating an on-hand inventory of grains that can be crushed and used at any time
- Satisfaction of creating beer from raw ingredients rather than manufactured extracts
I don't currently have all the equipment I would need for all-grain brewing. In fact, I haven't completely acquired everything I really want to have for extract brewing. To complete my basic brewing kit, I need to build my immersion chiller and I need to buy at least one, and preferably two propane tanks to round off the complete brewing kit. The parts to build the immersion chiller and to get a filled propane tanks is going to be roughly $120. The cost of building a mash tun like I want and getting a Barley Crusher grain mill is going to be another $170. This is not really a lot of money, but it's more than I can spend today. I'll have to get it in pieces until I have everything I need. The propane tank and immersion chiller are highest priority at the moment. I hope to get those taken care of in February. Maybe March will allow me to get the rest. I also haven't searched Ebay yet for a used Barley Crusher...
When I get these materials together, I'll be rather complete in my equipment for home brewing. I don't have any additional needs. Home brewing is definitely a cheaper hobby than my photography hobby!
BeerSmith
During my online searching for cool beer brewing related stuff, I found some software called BeerSmith. I was browsing the list of features on the website and decided to download the free trial to see what it had to offer. The features available in this software cover almost everything a home brewer could ask for. I'm not going to talk about all the features this software has to offer... you can click on the link for that.
The reason I bought this software is primarily for one feature. A lot of home brewers, like myself, are not experienced enough to formulate beer recipes on our own without some help or without basing it on an existing recipe. If someone asked me to put together a recipe for an imperial stout, I would have some basic idea of the ingredients necessary but not the quantities or specific hop choices that would make a really good recipe. BeerSmith solves this problem very nicely. You can create recpies in the program. You decide what style of beer that you want to brew and the software will give you a set of targets to meet with the ingredients you choose. BeerSmith gives you a target original gravity, final gravity, color, and bitterness. As you add ingredients to your recipe from the database, BeerSmith estimates these values and tells you if your brew is going to fall within the realm of the chosen style. I think this is a fantastic system. It will give me the ability to experiment with various ingredients and still stay within the realm of my choice in style. By the same token, it gives you the ability to modify a style that you might not like so well into something you do like. For instance, if you don't like the bitterness of an imperial stout, you can tweak the hop choices to tone it down. If you want one that is even more bitter, you can tweak in the other direction. If you want something that looks like a stout and tastes like an amber ale, BeerSmith gives you the tools to create that recipe.
The first brew that I make is going to be a recipe that I already have. I'll be experimenting with the BeerSmith on my second brew after all my equipment is tested and proven to be working properly...
The Home Brewing Kit
I made a trip to Advantage Beer & Wine Supplies this afternoon to get the rest of the eqipment I need to start making beer again. Here's what I bought and what I had already (from left):
- Carboy brush for cleaning out the 5-gallon glass carboy
- Bottle brush for cleaning the inside of bottles for re-use
- 5-gallon glass carboy as a secondary fermenter (had this already)
- Carboy carrier for moving the 5-gallon carboy when it's full
- Stopper and 3-piece airlock for 5-gallon carboy
- 1/2 gallon glass jug with stopper for yeast starters
- Fermtech auto siphon for transferring wort from fermenter to fermenter or into the bottling bucket
- Floating thermometer for cooking
- Hydrometer jar
- Hydrometer (had this already)
- Spring-loaded bottle filler (had this already)
- Stirring paddle for cooking (had this already)
- Bottle capper (had this already)
- 1 gross of bottle caps (had this already)
- B-Brite sanitizing powder for sanitizing equipment before use
- Nylon grain bag for steeping grains
- Hose tube for use with the auto-siphon and the bottle filler
- 6.5 gallon bucket with drain tap and drilled lid with 3-piece airlock (doubles as primary fermenter and bottling bucket)
- Two plastic funnels, one with screen for use with carboy and/or yeast starter jug
My brew kettle is not pictured. I haven't completely solved this problem yet, but in the beginning, I'm going to be cooking on the stove top. I'll be cooking half the volume and then transferring it into the primary fermenter with the rest of the water volume in the bucket. Ultimately I'll move the cooking process outside. I still have my propane burner but I don't have an adequate brew kettle for cooking the entire 5-gallon batches yet. I have another burner and stainless steel kettle that was originally a turkey deep-fryer that I might convert into a beer cooker. The kettle that came with that is definitely large enough for 5-gallons of beer. I'm also going to build an immersion chiller when the time and funds permit. Since I don't have the chiller ready to go at the moment, it's easier to cool the hot wort in an ice bath in the sink.
I will eventually replace the plastic bucket with a 6-gallon glass carboy as my primary fermenter. I prefer fermenting in glass, but I'm going to have to rebuild my ultimate beer brewing kit slowly.
I also purchased some of the ingredients I need for my first batch of beer. I purchased the liquid malt extract and some irish moss. The supply shop didn't have the exact yeast strain I wanted, but he was making an order and added what I wanted to it. I'm not sure if that will arrive in time to brew this weekend, so I'm scheduling my first brewing session for January 17th or 18th, whichever suits my schedule best. They had the crystal and chocolate malt I wanted, but I decided to wait until closer to brew time to buy that so it will stay fresh. I'm brewing a Märzen/Oktoberfest as my first brew as I get back into this hobby. It's a recipe straight out of Charlie Papazian's Complete Joy of Home Brewing book. I'll post the recipe when I make my brew-day blog post, along with some photos of the experience...
