Hop Lust

After two days of absolutely no signs of fermentation, I decided it was time to pitch some new yeast into the rye beer.  It seems like all 4 packets of K-97 that I had were dead on arrival, so I ended up going with US-05.  My main concern with doing this is that US-05 tends to attenuate much better than K-97 and has a little different flavor profile.  Mostly I just hope it doesn’t end up too dry with the really low mash temperature.

I always rehydrate my dry yeast, and I thought that since there were some bubbles on top after rehydrating that the K-97 would be ok.  For reference, here’s a pic of the rehydrated K-97:

And here’s a pic of the happily rehydrated US-05:

I pitched this on Thursday night and the beer is fermenting away now.

I put the Fantome-yeast Saison on tap the other day next to the second keg of Brueday beer and I really enjoy it.  It’s hoppy, phenolic and fruity.  Yum!  I still wish it had finished a little drier, but it’s quite drinkable as-is.

May 31st, 2009 | Tags: Brewing, brewing photos | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

Today I’m brewing one of my favorite beers, an American Rye that I like to call Stuck in Lodi Rye. I’m trying something a little different today, a step infusion mash with a protein rest. This beer is made with 50% rye and normally has a bit of a heavy mouthfeel. One batch that had some other issues during the brewday (my first 10 gallon batch) came out with a really crisp mouthfeel and the beer was absolutely incredible. My hope is that this quick 20 minute protein rest will help me get that same mouthfeel without having to go through the hassles I went through on my first 10 gallon batch.

11:07 – Dough-In.  130°F

11:27 – Added the step infusion in a few parts, which I think was a bad idea since some of the water probably cooled down while I was stirring the mash to check the temp.  Next time I will trust the calculations and just add it all at once.  Mash is at 144°F now, I’m heating up another 3 quarts to step up to my desired temp of 148°F.

11:36 – Stepped temperature up to 148°F

12:37 - Started the first batch runoff.

13:23 – Runoff is going really slowly, but the second runoff is going and the kettle is on the burner.  Wort is still flowing from the mash tun, but it’s not going very fast at all.

14:11 – While I was checking the runoff I noticed that the flame from my burner was a little low and sure enough I was about out of propane.  I just got back from filling up, I got 4.7 gallons in a 20 lb tank.  At least I ran out before I’d added the 60 minute hops.  The wort’s at about 180°F now and the burner’s going at full bore.  This did seem to give plenty of time for the runoff to finish.

14:20 – Got back outside from grabbing the camera just in the nick of time to see this:

Of course, since I wanted a picture of it, I didn’t get the burner stopped quite in time, but this is about the most minor boilover I’ve ever had:

May 26th, 2009 | Tags: brewday, brewing photos | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

mmmmmm, pellicle….

I kegged the Saisons yesterday.  The one with the RR culture had that nice pellicle on top, but I went ahead and kegged it anyway.  I’m guessing that it will just go ahead and form another one in the keg and finish doing it’s thing.  Both of the fermentations finished at 1.010, a little higher than I’d like, but not too bad.  Based on that pellicle, I’m guessing that the RR one will still dry out a little more in the keg.  I purged the keg with co2, but didn’t put any pressure on that one.  I’ll leave you with a shot of the hydrometer reading from the RR batch:

May 18th, 2009 | Tags: brewing photos | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

May 3rd, 2009 | Tags: brewing photos | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

I pulled some hydrometer samples this weekend to see how the saison was coming along.

That’s the one fermented with Fantome yeast, and it’s at around 1.012.  The picture shows it at 1.010, but the beer in the fermenter is at about 80°F so I corrected it for the temperature.  Not bad for a saison after only one week in my experience.  The last saison I brewed took FOREVER to finish, so hopefully this one will get down to single digits in the next week or so.

The one fermented with the RR dregs is still up a little higher at around 1.020.  I’m not really surprised since I think this is a brettanomyces culture and I’ve heard that it’s a slow fermenter.  I’ll be keeping my eye on it to see if it’s going to finish up on it’s own.  I do have a slurry of The Bruery yeast that I kept from my last batch that I’ll try to use if it doesn’t want to finish on it’s own.

The good news is that both samples taste great.  The RR one is still quite sweet of course, but the Fantome batch is pretty good as-is.

April 26th, 2009 | Tags: brewing photos, yeast | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

Yesterday turned out to be my 60th batch of homebrew.  Both fermenters are bubbling away nicely.

Yesterday seemed to go really smooth compared to some of my more recent brewdays.  I think the biggest difference was that I brought my kettle, hlt and burner up the night before and got all my mash water measured out.  This let me just take the kettle out and fire it up in the morning.  While that seems like a minor thing, it really made the brewday seem to go a lot smoother.  

I don’t think it hurt that it’s staying light out later, either …

April 20th, 2009 | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

It looks like I’m actually brewing again, hooray!  I’ve still got 15G of Belgian Pale Ale in fermenters sitting behind me that all needs to be kegged before I can use the fermenters for the saison.

11:05 – Mashed in a few minutes ago and just realized that I haven’t set a timer. 148°F, 5.2pH.

12:09 – Finished my first vorlauf and started running off my first batch sparge.

12:43 – The second batch sparge is running off now and the kettle is on the burner.

13:21 – Let the hot break die down and added the 60 minute hops.

14:21 – Added the knockout hops and started the chiller.  Kegs are sanitized and I’m going to start filling them now.
15:00 – Just finished filling the 3 kegs of Belgian Pale Ale from the Brue Day.  The wort is down to about 88°F and I only just now switched it over to ice water.  I would have done this sooner I think if I hadn’t been busy filling kegs.  Now I just need to get the fermenters cleaned, filled and pitched.

15:14 -Wort is down to 68°F, starting whirlpool.

16:29 – Got a bit lazy there, but both fermenters are now oxygenated (first time!) and pitched.  When I was just outside I noticed that there was a sheet of what looked almost just like gelatin on the side of my kettle.  I’ve seen the strands of hot break before, but nothing quite like this.  I guess it’s probably cold break, pretty neat stuff.

April 19th, 2009 | Tags: brewday, brewing photos | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

I’ve got this Sunday set aside for brewing, but I still need to keg the beer from the Brueday we did the last weekend in March.  I think Sunday’s going to be pretty busy with kegging 15G and brewing another 10, but it’ll be well worth it.   I’m still not brewing my 2009 RIS yet, instead I’ll be brewing a Saison.  There are two reasons, I don’t have the grain for the RIS and I’ve got a lot of German Pils malt sitting around.  I also decided a few weeks ago to try propagating some yeast from bottles of commercial beer.  I tried 3 different brews: Fantome Noel, Ommegang Biere de Mars, and a bottle of Russian River’s Consecration that I lucked out and found at Whole Foods.  I was able to get viable critters from two of the bottles, and here are some pics of my babies:

The top picture is the one I’m most excited about.  It’s cultured up from whatever happened to be in my bottle of Consecration.  All I know about it is that the beer made in the first step-up had the distinct tastes of brettanomyces bruxellensis, but I don’t know if it’s a pure culture or if there is some saccaromyces, lactobacillus, pediococcus, etc in there with it.

The bottom picture is the yeast propagated from the bottle of Fantome Noel.  I’m excited to try this too, largely because this is the first yeast I’ve ever stepped up from a bottle.

April 17th, 2009 | Tags: yeast | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

This last weekend was really busy, mostly due to brewing related stuff.  Patrick and Tyler from The Bruery sacrificed their Sunday to let a bunch of homebrewers run amok in the brewery and brew up about 8 barrels of wort.  We all took the wort home with us to ferment on our own schedules.  I’m using the brewery’s house yeast and all three of my fermenters had a 1-2″ thick layer of krausen when I woke up this morning.  I’m planning to add some brett to one of my fermenters to funk it up a bit, probably from some Orval dregs or Roselare.  

Of course, my fermenters were still holding my pale ale, so to get ready for the brewday I needed to keg it.  It ended up finishing at 1.012 (3° Plato) which is just about what I wanted.  The amazing aroma from the last sample had faded some and now I wish I had some more summit or simcoe so I could dry hop it.  It still smelled and tasted pretty good even if I’d like a little more intense hoppiness.   I ended up cleaning 3 kegs, kegging the pale ale and then running BLC through my draft lines on Saturday afternoon/evening/night.

March 30th, 2009 | Category: Brewing | Comments Off