Hop Lust

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

Whoa! I took a gravity sample on the pale ale yesterday and boy does it smell awesome! It’s at 1.014 right now, it will probably drop a little bit more while I’m gone this week but I’m happy with it regardless.

March 8th, 2009 | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

I didn’t get to brew on the holiday in February like I had hoped.  I did keg the MBL though.  My study group decided to get together on the holiday to go over some case studies we were working on.  The last few weeks I’ve been neck deep in case studies and projects and I’ve been struggling just to keep my head above water.  Thankfully, we finished our quarter yesterday and today I’m brewing!

I slept in pretty late since I’ve been getting hardly any sleep for the last week or so, and finally got started around noon.

I decided to go with a pale ale today.  So far in 2009 I’ve been in a session beer kind of mood and I’m sticking with that for this beer.  It may be a bit on the big side for a session beer, but I still think it qualifies.  I’m also using up some hops that have been in my freezer for a while.

12:55 – Mashed in @ 151°F and 5.25pH.  Then took off to go get more propane.

14:48 – Basically done sparging, wort’s at about 180°F and I’m getting back outside so I don’t have another boilover.

15:15 – Added my 60 minute hops – some Chinook pellets.  Time to start cleaning.

14:18 – Killed the burner and threw in my knockout hops.  I won’t be starting the chiller for a few more minutes.  This is a strategy that I tried once a long time ago with a pale ale and it came out with a hop flavor and aroma that I really liked, so I’ve stuck with it.  I like to let the knockout hops sit for between 15-30 minutes before starting the chiller.  I’ll probably be on the short side of that today.

14:32 – Started the chiller…

17:09 – Just got back from the store to grab some ice to run through my immersion chiller.  It’s at 90ºF now.

17:35 - So much for this being  nice session beer.  I just took my grvity reding nd it showed tht I’m t 1.060.  Bummer, but mybe I finlly fixed my efficiency problem with my new drill.  Oh, nd one of the keys on my keybord isn’t working for some reson … cn you guess which one??

March 1st, 2009 | Tags: brewday, Brewing, brewing photos | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

I mentioned earlier that my next batch would likely be a Russian Imperial Stout.  The last two years I’ve brewed a RIS in either February or March to be ready for the next winter.  I intend to keep that trend going, but right now I’m just not really feeling a RIS.  I’ve got a recipe lined up that I think I will end up brewing, but I’m still working out which yeast to use.  Until my recent experience I was thinking of using yeast from The Bruery, but now I’m not sure how well that would do in a beer that I want to keep some residual sweetness.  The previous two RIS used US-05 and Nottingham, and I’ll probably go back to US-05 if I don’t go with The Bruery’s strain.

What I’m really thinking I might do next is a pale ale, and wait until March to brew the RIS.  Looking back at my brew logs it’s been over a year since I’ve brewed this, one of my favorite styles.  I’ve got some miscellaneous hops laying around that I think would be great for this: Simcoe, Summit, Chinook, Columbus, Centennial, etc.  The real trick is figuring out what flavor I want and picking the right hop additions.

Finally, the Mo Betta Lite is still sitting in the fermenters at about 40F.  I’m planning to keg it this Sunday and then brew on Monday for the holiday.

February 15th, 2009 | Tags: decisions | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

My first keg of belgian oatmeal stout kicked last week and I decided to swap in a fresh keg of the same brew right before I left for class last Saturday morning.   I wanted to get it cold so I could bring a growler of it to a super bowl party on Sunday.  As soon as I hooked up the gas I knew there was a problem: foam started shooting up into the gas line even though the gas was turned on.  I quickly discovered that my manifold does not have check valves like I thought it did and the stout almost made it into my keg of IPA.  Without thinking, I disconnected the gas from both kegs and pulled on the pressure relief valve of the stout.  Big mistake.  Belgian oatmeal stout went everywhere!  My clothes were soaked and I was now close to being late for class so I just closed the fridge to deal with it later.  

The last time I had touched the keg was a little over a month earlier when it had been pressurized to about 30psi at room temperature.  Not enough to cause the kind of reaction I got when I hooked it up.  As best I can figure the yeast must have kept working on the already very dry (2°P) beer and overcarbonated the beer in the keg.  I’ve been venting pressure for a few days and I can finally pour a glass that’s about 30% beer and 70% foam – at least good enough that I can drink it.

A quick update on the Mo Betta Lite, I took a gravity reading last weekend and it was at 1.5°P (1.006) which is pretty good.  With any luck it will drop just a little more.  I’m keeping it nice and cool and I’ll probably keg it this weekend.  The hops in the sample weren’t quite as noticeable as I’d like, but the grainy sweetness was very nice and it had a slight but noticeable bitterness to it.  Pretty good, but it should be better once it’s cold and carbonated.

February 4th, 2009 | Tags: Brewing | Category: Brewing | Comments (1)

January 25th, 2009 | Tags: brewing photos | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

I just got back from judging the Batch 50 competition at The Bruery.  As always Patrick and Rachel were great hosts, providing the judges with food and a bottle each of their Saison and Trade Winds Tripel.  I snapped this photo of everyone hard at work right after our group finished judging.

My Belgian Oatmeal Stout finished 2nd in it’s flight with an average score of 35.6 from the three judges.  Not enough to win, but a good score and I got some good feedback from the judges.

This was a really fun day, and I can’t wait to taste the winner as brewed at The Bruery.

January 24th, 2009 | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

Today I’m brewing Mo Betta Lite.  I got off to a little later start than I wanted today, but that’s pretty typical for my brewdays.

The recipe I’m using today is here: Mo Betta Lite – 2009-01-19

11:40 – Mashed in at 148F, pH 5.4

13:10 – Added “mashout” water and began 1st runoff, also started heating batch sparge water… ahh the joys of only having one burner…

14:10 – My first boilover in a really long time!  What a mess.  That’s what I get for working on a website while bringing wort to a boil.  Looks like I overshot my gravity by quite a bit, I was reading 9.8 Brix after the boilover and I’m shooting for an OG at 9.3 Brix.  I added about a gallon of Brita water to bring it down in the 9.0 Brix range.  I’ll still overshoot my gravity, but not by quite as much.

14:50 – Just saw that my Belgian Oatmeal Stout didn’t place at the January AHA COC.  It’s a really tasty beer, so I’m a little disappointed.  I’m curious what the scoresheets are going to say.  Hopefully it does better at the Batch 50 competition at The Bruery next weekend.

15:45 – Turned on the chiller and took a quick reading with the refractometer.  It says we’re at about 10.8 Brix, or 1.042.  I’m a little lower on volume than I like, so I’ll probably pick up some water from the store and dilute it back down.  I’m hunting for an online dilution calculator since BeerAlchemy doesn’t seem to include one. (Update: Found one by Drew Beechum from the Maltose Falcons on this page http://www.maltosefalcons.com/tech/.  It’s an Excel file, so I had to load it into Google Docs to see it, but that seems to be working well enough.  1 G of water should get me to around 1.038 which would be good.)

16:45 – Turned off the chiller, got the wort down to about 65F after I ran to the store to pick up some ice so I could recirculate ice water through the chiller.  I added 1.5G of water from the store, checked my gravity (with my hydrometer this time) and it was at 1.044.  Blerg.  I added the last half gallon and that brought me to 1.042 which looks to be my final OG.  Just waiting for the whirlpool to finish now.

19:55 – Finished cleaning and ran off to hockey (late!) .  Now, 3 hours from finishing chilling to finishing cleaning sounds like a long time, and it is.  Buut,  part of my cleaning regimen of late has been to run hot PBW through my pump and whirlpool arm for about 30 minutes and then run hot water through for about 30 minutes.  That’s an hour right there, not counting the time to drain and refill/reheat the water.  For the PBW part I use the water that I ran through my immersion chiller since it’s already hot.  Then, today the clicker for my car alarm died and I had to figure out why.  I was hoping it wasn’t from when I dropped it the other day, and luckily it was just the battery.  My multimeter said it was putting out .2-.3 volts, it’s a 12V battery.  Finding a new battery was a bit of fun and this whole thing killed another 45 minutes or so.  Still, this is certainly an area where I need to look at my process.

23:55 – Got back from my hockey game and the wort was down to 53 and 55 in the two fermenters – time to pitch!  Just pitched a rehydrated packet of US-05 into each 5G fermenter.

Looking at this brewday, it was kind of a mess.  I overshot my gravity, undershot my volume and it took forever.  At least I think I can explain most of those.  My old cordless drill’s battery died a few months ago and I replaced it with a corded model.  Since then my efficiency dropped from 79% to about 68%.  I ran the drill faster today, and that may be the reason for the higher efficiency.  I also decided to try using BeerAlchemy’s built in water calculator to calculate the water volumes instead of doing the math myself.  BeerAlchemy’s grain absorption is hard coded and is quite a bit off on my system, it’s really my only gripe with the software.  I think that’s why I missed my volume.  I still can’t really get over the fact that I added 3 G of water to this brew and still overshot my gravity by 1.006.  Blerg.

January 19th, 2009 | Tags: brewday | Category: Brewing | Comments Off

After a string of highish gravity brews I think it’s time to brew a nice session beer.  My two taps have been serving nothing but 7+% ABV beers for about two months now.  By the time my next batch will be ready I think I’ll be in the mood for something a little lighter.   I was thinking about a simple pale ale, but now I’m leaning towards a beer I brewed last year for my brother.   I call it Mo Betta Lite.  This one’s tough to categorize, it’s sort of a cross between an American Lite Lager, a Pilsner, and a Cream ale.  Think of sweet pils malt accentuated by light spicy and earthy hop notes in the aroma and flavor.  I use my go-to house yeast, US-05, but keep the temperature nice and cool at about 53F.  This results in a very clean fermentation profile and lets the malt and hops really come through.  1.036 OG, 13 IBU

After  this batch it’s about time for my annual Russian Imperial Stout, so I better take advantage of this chance to brew a lighter beer while it’s there.

Currently on tap: Belgian Oatmeal Stout, Post-Millenial IPA

January 11th, 2009 | Category: Brewing | Comments Off