What Is This?

Update: Nothing, I guess. Well, krausen. I've just never seen so damn much of it.

Brewday: Tailgate Ale

I've been wrestling with exactly how to do this for a couple of weeks. For an explanation why I'm trying to make a tasteless beer check out the link.

• 5.5 lb 2-row
• 3.0 lb flaked corn
• 1.0 lb Jasmine rice

The biggest un-planned headache here was what to do with the rice. Most recipes call for 'minute rice', added dry directly to the mash. I wanted to try and use real rice so I was faced with either doing multi-step mashing (rests) or cooking the rice.

I went for the latter, but didn't stir like I should have and burnt some rice on the bottom of the pan. I was extra careful to keep the burnt stuff out of the mash, though. Cooking directions went like this:

No rinse, boil water at a ratio of 1:1.2 (rice:water), add rice and simmer for 20 min.

Hops and yeast:

• .5 Sanz - 60 min
  
• .5 Williamette - 60 min
  
• US-5, dry

I hit my target mash temp of 152F on the dot using the Tw formula.

Tw = (.2/R)(T2-T1) + T2
R = 14/ 9
Tw = (.2 / 1.556)(152-72) + 152
Tw = 162

Like I said I went with just a single initial rest with cooked rice, although for the high-reaching amongst you I think there is merit to using a rest. There is also a very complicated and long-drawn-out way of cooking the rice which I didn't like Not that I'm an expert, but it seemed like over-kill. I think the two best options are to either go ahead and buy minute rice or simply do a 20 minute cook in a small pot.

And then the best news of the day:

1.046 grav X 5.8 gal / 9.5 lb grain = 28 (!)

By far my highest so far, and very encouraging. That puts E% at about 74% when you take into account the ingredients.

Boil went well, glad I picked up a box fan for $2 at a garage sale on the walk home from the store...90 minutes of boiling has a way of warming up a room.

I ended up a tad short of 5 gallons but added some clean water to get there. The plan is to let it sit for three weeks in the primary at ~65F and then bottle.

BrewDay: Oatmeal Stout

I've been on a heavy wheat beer diet for a while now, and so why not mix it up with something that is in a lot of ways the compete opposite? I'm adding the oatmeal for sweetness, though, to help ease the transition.

The grain mix is an adaptation of Palmer's stout:

• 8 lb two-row base malt
• 1 lb crystal [muntons - 64L]
• .75 lb flaked barley
• .40 lb roasted malt [675L]
• 1 lb store-bought oats
  

I increased the recommended amount of flaked because I wanted more body, and also decreased the amount of roasted because the L value on the black stuff I got was very high.

If you're curious, this is how the recipe differs from the the common Guinness proportions:

Thanks to some helpful discussion at homebrewtalk I realized my store-bought oats needed gelatinized; so that was done just prior to mash.

Strike temp was 165F, which put my mash at 153F, about one degree higher than I wanted. For my second sparge I added 180F water, although I probably shouldn't have gone higher than 175F because of one the 2,463 things Palmer knows about that will lead to non-ideal wort.

Efficiency went like this:

1.047 grav X 6 gal / 11.15 lb grain = 25.3

So not great, I was really hoping to get closer to 28, but I had the boil down to fall back on.

To get the water a bit more Irish-like (I use bottled to avoid the poison that is DC city water) I added 2 teaspoons of gypsum.

The hop additions:

• 0.8 oz Nuggest (60 min)
• 1.0 oz Fuggles (20 min)

I sparged a total of 7 gallons of water and ended up with 6 after the mash. Post-boil I ended up with almost exactly 5 gallons of wort and on OG of 1.060.

My biggest concern right now is the yeast. I used the smack pack for Wyeast, Irish Ale #1084, but for the second time in a row I couldn't get the pack fully inflated; it rose maybe 30% of full. Now last time this happened fermentation went fine, but with three hours to sit I don't understand what the issue is.

Eat Your Oats [But Gelatinize Them First]

My oats on a cookie sheet, ready for the oven.

Something that didn't occur to me while getting ready for today's Oatmeal Stout was the fact that oats, purchased in bulk at the market and not at the local home brew shop, aren't out-of-the-package ready for mashing.

So, remember, with oats, that they need to be gelatinize first. And no, I didn't know what that meant at first either. Per Wikipedia:

Starch gelatinization is a process that breaks down the intermolecular bonds of starch molecules in the presence of water and heat, allowing the hydrogen bonding sites (the hydroxyl hydrogen and oxygen) to engage more water.

So in order for to the oats to take on water and give out flavor, you need to cook them: 20 minutes at 350F, but don't forget to turn them once or twice.

Seeing How Good I Am At Taking The Flavor Out Of Beer

Staying in character, I changed the two recipes I have on tap on the morning I was scheduled to hop in the zipcar and head to the LHPS. I realized that I was in effect brewing two very similar styles of beer, both very light American ales, and wanted to mix it up.

The decision, then, was to fold the two planned Cream and Corn recipes into one super light version and then make an attempt at another stout. I searched the internet for a Miller clone and decided to go with something roughly along the lines of 75% two-row, 18% corn and 7% rice. Now the traditional college beers are all lagers, a style I'm not able to brew, but light beer can be made a lot of ways and this will hopefully be one of them.

I was immediately challenged by the brew partner for (1) wanting to make something that was a copy of no-flavor beer, and (2) spending money to make such no-flavor beer when it is readily available in perfection for $11 a case.

My responses, in order:

1. I have friends who don't like beer, "BMCers" as they are some times called, and it would be interesting to see if I could get them to buy into the whole homebrew thing if I was able to create a light, football tailgate worthy beer.


2. But that's not the point. Plus at $40 for 50 beers I'm not sure it's really that much more expensive. The $11 cases are a flashback to our upbringings, in places that weren't DC that sold goods at reasonable prices.

Detailed recipe to come...

Local Home Brew Shop > Home Depot

I hate going to Home Depot, I really do. I've never once left there with everything I wanted, and I bet I've spent five minutes in the store for every dollar I've spent, which is really a pretty awful ratio.

I went there to try and build a wort chiller, only to find out they lacked some of the fittings I needed (in hindsight, though, I could have gotten away with a hose clamp if only I had found directions to do so online).

So when I couldn't find a braided hose at a hardware store the size of five football fields I said screw it and went to buy supplies at the LHBS. They sold me this, which I was happy to buy from someone who actually was interesting is selling me something:



I then drilled a hole in this cooler:


With this bit:


And bam(!):

I Like My Coffee Black, Like My Stout

It's pretty easy to find information about how to put coffee into a stout, but it's a lot more difficult to decide which method to use.

I was lucky enough to have some background knowledge about beans, their flavor, and how to make a good cup of joe...but the closest I had previously ever come to making a coffee stout was the time I poured way too much Irish cream in a gas station Folgers.

Folgers is awful by the way, and no amount of Irish cream will make you forget it.

So, on to the methods, via haphazard research:

1. Brew coffee, the old fashion way in your coffee maker, let it cool and add it to the secondary.
2. Brew coffee, this time using the cold brew method, and add it to the secondary. The most common way to get the first part of that sentence done is to use about a pots worth of coffee, add it to a sanitized gallon jug or French press, grind the beans coarsely and let it sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
3. Add whole or coarsely ground beans right to the secondary, or even drop them in the primary in you are lazy (or fearful) about racking to a secondary.
4. Add a cup of Folgers to the secondary. Yes, if you believe what you read on the Internet someone actually did this.
   

As far as equipment goes, at a minimum you are going to need a five gallon secondary (this would be a good excuse to actually use it), a coffee grinder, and access to fresh beans. Based on this comment you can infer that I think option 4 is not really an option at all and that adding beans directly to the primary is a questionable move i.e. a derivative of option 3 (they are more than likely going to end up in the trub, thus not getting a chance to soak much in the actual beer).

If you ever took an LSAT you would probably have deduced that I don't think much of option 1. A coffee pot isn't required if you aren't using hot coffee, and because brewing coffee hot can produce a harsher taste and add some bite, I prefer to attempt to reduce those things via a cold brew.

So while any of the options will give you a coffee flavored beer, cold brewing fresh beans for 24 hours give you a great tasting flavor, adding the a 5 gallon secondary allows for it to adequately infiltrate the beer, and based on what I can gather probably the results in the best blend of coffee and stout.

Rack To A Secondary?

One of the first major issues I ran into after getting the ground rules straight was what to about all the waiting. Brew day is a lot of work, but after things get sealed up, how else can I help?

Like most innocent questions, there is a long and drown out debate about the merits getting involved during the magic of fermentation, i.e. racking to a secondary.

Some people are driven by simplifying processes; I am not one of those people. I don't mind complex, prefer it even, but only if it creates a tangible improvement.

My first few batches I got in the way as often as possible. After one week I would rack to a secondary, at the time simply another 6 gallon plastic bucket. Two weeks later I would move the beer back into the fermenter/bottling bucket.

Moving to a second 6 gallon plastic bucket was probably an unwise move, even if you subscribe to the idea that racking to a secondary does in fact improve flavor. There is too much headroom and too much chance of oxidation occurring; this in addition to the risk of exposing the beer during racking.

The five gallon glass carboy, pictured above, came as a gift and damnit I wanted to use it. Even after knowing deep down I probably wasn't seeing a material improvement by racking my simple extract beer, I often did it anyway.

That's not to say there aren't times when it was a good move.

• My Coffee Stout obviously required some way to get the coffee into the beer. I cold brewed fresh beans for 24 hours in the fridge, added to the secondary, and gently swirled the beer out of the primary and into the secondary to get a good distribution.
• I've brewed an Apricot Ale and Apricot Wheat, both requiring a rack to a secondary in order to add the flavoring*.
• I've sometimes lacked the planning required to brew, ferment, clear and bottle two batches at a time. With only two buckets and one carboy, I've sometimes needed to move a batch out of a primary into a secondary in order to get a bottling bucket.
  
• More practically, I do think that it's a good idea to rack beer to a secondary if you aren't going to be bottling within three weeks of pitching the yeast. Letting the beer sit on the trub will create off flavors and there is no reason to let five gallons of perfectly good beer become compromised because I've had other things to do on Sunday afternoons.
  

*That being said, I'm not a big fan of the flavoring available at your local home brew shop. There is no indication what the hell it actually is and, after using it twice now, seems a lot like drinking the fountain lemonade at Subway that claims to "contain 0% juice" instead of just, like, lemonade.

Most of my beers are not high OG beers (usually no higher than 1.042) and, therefore, I've decided that moving to a secondary is only going to be done when the process demands it like in situations bulleted above.

BrewDay: First All Grain Batch

Just for the record, my first assault on All Grain Brewing...

Recipe derived from BierMuncher's recipe on Home Brew Talk, adjusted for a 5 gallon batch:

As far as a recipe:
(For 11 gallons)
8# 2-row
9# Flaked Wheat
2# White Wheat Malt

1.25 ounces of Sterlnig Hops at 60 minutes (I just use whatever clean bittering hop I can find since it plays such a minimal role)

6-7 ounces fresh orange zest - 10 minutes
2 ounces of freshly crushed (pulverized) coriander - 10 minutes
1-2 Tbsp of crushed black pepper - 10 minutes
4 chamomile tea bags - 10 minutes

Now I halfed that to get to a five gallon batch, and for the most part it went okay. Although while we are on the subject of batch size, my biggest complain was probably that I didn't actually get five gallons of beer.

Oh, and the extras:

Orange zest, chamomile, coriander seeds and a very small amount of pepper.

Mashing the grains is actually the most fun, and although it takes a lot of extra time I think it's worth it. It wasn't until the guy at the local home brew shop told me the shelf life on dry extract is, his words, "forever", that I realized how much room their is to grow in freshness. Besides, most of my extra batches were beginning to taste the same.

I didn't start the batch until 9pm on a Monday night, which was a very poor move. The problem was that I was just so damn excited to use the lauter tun I had just run all over town for and built that I couldn't help myself. I didn't finish until close to three in the morning, which was followed by four agonizing days of work. Such is the life, I guess.

Some other mistakes:

• I didn't think at all about using a protein rest, my mash was almost all wheat and anything over 30-50% really begs for one. My efficiency suffered as a result, but I still made beer.
• I don't have a scale. This has never been a problem, but the guy at the local home brew shop talked me into buying a ten pound bag of pre-crushed grains. I think I was able to get close by using the volume from the wheat and then adjusting accordingly.
• I didn't have a way of determining how much wort I got out of the first sparge batch, and therefore wasn't able to make an adjustment for the second one to get my target of 5.5-6 gallons of pre-boil wort. I ended up with 4 gallons of beer, about a gallon less than I should have had.
• I didn't realize my stove can't handle 5-6 gallons of water at a full boil, but did get lucky with the pot and was able to saddle it over two burners. Sometimes a lack of a plan works out.
• I didn't crush the coriander seeds, why didn't anyone tell me I had to?
  

The beer is still three weeks away from being ready. The nice thing about your first batch is you aren't worried if it doesn't turn out that great, although my hopes for a highly drinkable beer are still probably unreasonable high.

Chilla

So the wort chiller has arrived and is ready for dispatch.

Not the actual one, of course, but the closest I could find online

I had actually spent quite a bit of time researching how to build one, including watching this highly involved video:

There were immediately problems. That guys garage is bigger than my entire apartment. As you could probably then guess, I don't have half the tools he uses and nothing even approaching a method to solder. I made a trip to the hardware store anyway, following a print out of (I didn't realize this at the time) overly complex directions. This might not be ground breaking news, but the service at Home Depot kind of sucks and I retreated in shame without the proper supplies.

If only I had been able to look at one in real life. It's really quite simple: the tubing would be difficult to wrap, but besides that the hose clamps were a simple alternative the online directions didn't suggest.

Either way, I'm looking forward to using a lot less ice on brew day...now to figure out what I'm going to do with all the water.

The Batch Failures And Drunken Thoughts Of A Home Brewer

The title pretty much sums it up, I think.