All posts by Daniel

Brewing Log, Recipes

Bourbon Barrel Stout

A fellow member of my local homebrew club received a 53 gallon bourbon barrel as a birthday present.  Several members are brewing the same stout recipe to fill the barrel.  I will be adding 10 gallons to the total.  Below is the recipe.  I am currently waiting on an order of oat malt before I brew.

15# Marris Otter
6# Oat Malt
1.5# VIctory Malt
1.5# Chocolate Malt
1.5# Crystal 120
1.5# Carafa II
1# Roasted Barley (300 SRM)
3oz Magnum @ 60min
1oz Williamette @ 10min
Mashed at 136° and 156°
English Ale S-04

I ended up with a OG of 1.069.  The beer needed blow off tubes less than 12 hours later and is now fermenting very aggressively.  I need to figure out a better container for the blow off tubes since the container is now overflowing with krausen.

Barrel Top Barrel

Brewing Log, eHERMS Build

Bulk buy and Porter brew

I brewed a porter on Sunday.  It was my first chance to try the brew bag and I am a big fan.  My mash tun cleanup was super simple.  I removed the grain and bag and placed it in a kitchen garbage bag so it did not leak as I carried it out to the compost pile.  I them simply dumped the bag out, rinsed it out, and hung it to dry. I ended up running close to 90% efficiency so my OG ended up at 1.059  which should result in a 6-6.2% ABV beer.  I wonder if the bag actually helped improve the efficiency?  Perhaps reducing channeling down the side of the mash tun?   Five days in and the gravity has dropped to 1.018.  I expect a drop of 6 to 8 more points in the next few days.  The sample was nice and hoppy so I do not plan on dry hopping.

I waited until this Sunday because my grain came in from my clubs group buy.  Homebrew clubs commonly work with a local brewery to do bulk buys once or twice a year.  I was able to pick up a 100lb of 2-row for $0.61/lb.  I also picked up a 55# sack of Maris Otter and Pilsen malt.

Now on to planning my big barleywine.

Brewing Log

Baby Beer and More…

My wife and I have a new addition to our family on the way.  Boy or girl we don’t know but I do know I want to brew a beer to celebrate.  This “baby beer” will be be a 12%-15% ABV english (low hop) barley wine.  The goal is a beer that will age very well.  A 5 gallon batch will leave me with 24+ 22oz bomber bottles.  The idea would be for my Wife and I to share a bottle on their birthday.  If it ages well enough we may even be able to share the last few bottles with them.

On a similar note I want to brew a batch of my Wife’s choice beer so it is ready after the little one has arrived.  Porter is one of her favorite styles.  The plan is to brew a American Porter (2015 BJCP Style 20A) on the low end of the style.  The first keg will be infused with some cold brew coffee from one of our local third wave coffee shops.

Simple Porter base:
18# Marris Otter Pale Malt
1.25# UK Crystal 60L Malt
1.25# UK Chocolate Malt
.75# Black Patent Malt
154° Mash Temp
US-05 Yeast

I will be using up some old hops from the freezer.  I have some hops that are great in an IPA that I am going to throw in this porter.  Depending on how it tastes after fermentation is complete I do have some Columbus and Cascade whole hops I could dry hop with.  This should add a dank and piney hop profile to the malty smokey porter.
.75oz@60min Warrior 18.7% AA
.5oz@30min Nugget 13.5% AA
.6oz@30min Columbus 15.5% AA
.75oz@0min Amarillo 8.8% AA
.5oz@0min Simcoe 12.7% AA

This all should net the following at 75% efficiency.

OG: 1.049
FG: 1.010
ABV: 5.22%
IBU: 41
SRM: 32

Brewing Log, eHERMS Build

Process Improvement Experimentation

I am thinking about starting to try some different techniques to make my brew day even easier without compromising the beer.

  • Using a Brew Bag. This is normally used for brew in a bag (BIAB) systems but can also be used in a dedicated mash tun.  I will continue to use my false bottom but the bag will allow easy removal and disposal of the grains after the mash is complete.  This will also cut down of the effort and time needed to clean the mash tun.
  • Pick up some iodine cheap to check for conversion completion rather than always mash a set time of 60 minutes.
  • Switch to batch sparging vs the current fly sparging.  This will eliminate the hour long sparge process.  I small efficiency loss is no big deal as long as it is consistent.   I can take this farther and stop doing a mash out.  Instead while I drain the first runnings I will bring the HLT up to 170 for the sparge water.  This will eliminate the 10 or so minutes it takes to heat the whole mash to 168 via recirculation.
  • Try low or no-chill brewing.  This will save time, reduce water waste, and add the chiller to one less thing I need to clean.   Folks in our local homebrewing club have been experimenting with this with success.
  • Build a single step beer line cleaning process for all 5 taps similar to this post. The only special step would be to remove the restrictor plate from the stout tap.
Brewing Log, Recipes

New IPA recipe

I brewed an extremely light colored and dry beer with a big juicy hop character.  I was a big fan of Mosaic + Falconers Flight hop combo.  In this beer I am going to try Mosaic and Citra.

OG at 80% efficiency 1.060, FG 1.012, 6.4% ABV, 107 IBU

20# 2-row
1# Munich 10L
1# Corn Sugar

2oz Nugget at 60min
2oz Citra at 15min
2oz Mosaic at 15min
2oz Citra at 5min
2oz Mosaic at 5min
2oz Citra at 0min
2oz Mosaic at 0min
2oz Citra dry hop for 5 days
2oz Mosaic dry hop for 5 days

White Labs – San Diego Super Yeast WLP090

Already kicked the first keg of this.  It definitely turned out with a light body. It is very easy to drink.  Next time I might try just increasing the 2-row and dropping the sugar.  I think this will increase the body a little but not to much.  I like the Mosaic + Citra combo but I think I liked the Mosaic + Falconers Flight even better.  The later had a very mango like flavor vs the fresh grapefruit flavor of the former.

IMG_20151215_144212

Brewing Log

I need a blow off tube for my blow off…

I just brewed a 1.081 version of Denny Conn’s Rye Smile IPA.  I pitched Dennys Favorite 50 (Wyeast 1450) at 1m cells/ml/°Plato.  The fermentation was already rolling after 8 hours and now 36 hours later my blow off bucket is blowing off.  Hopefully it sees around 80% attenuation so it drys out nicely.  I plan on trying to dry hop in the keg with this batch.

The Munich Helles has been transferred to kegs and left in my keggerator to continue lager.  The last half of the ESB has been bottled.  That was a good reminder of why I like kegging.

IMG_20150813_083309

Brewing Log, Recipes

Summer progress

The summer has been very busy but I managed to squeeze two brew sessions in so far, a Munich Helles and an ESB.  The Helles started at 1.057 and finished at 1.012 for a ABV of 5.9%.  It is currently cooling to lager temp where it will rest for the next month and a half or so.  The ESB started at 1.057 also and finished at 1.015 for a ABV of 5.5%.  Since my fermentation chamber is being used for lagering right now I made a swamp cooler for the carboys in the basement.  This seemed to keep the beer in the high 60’s.  I may bottle 5 gallons of the ESB and keg the other 5 gallons.  I think the malty ESB will age well in bottles.  Next up is an IPA because I just ran out!

New Brewer

A new brewer?

My brother expressed some interest in trying to brew.  He has a new son (Hi Ben!) and brewing is something you can do at home with family.  This led me to think of how I would start my journey knowing all the information that I know now.   Here is the start of my thoughts.

  • I would still start with extract. Steeped grains and LME/DME kits with separate hops.
  • Use your largest existing pot.  He already has a very big pot @ 32qt/8gallons.  Partial boils are OK.  I think I would still recommend it with an 8 gallon pot to avoid boil overs.
  • Ferment in buckets.
  • Spend some money on a immersion chiller.   I have an old one to pass along.

The starter “kit”

  1. One 8 gallon bucket fermenter with lid and airlock link
  2. One 8 gallon bottling bucket with lid and spout link
  3. 8oz Starsan link
  4. 28oz spray bottle for starsan link
  5. 3/8″ Auto Siphon link
  6. 18″ Plastic Paddle link
  7. Long stem Thermometer link
  8. Thermometer Strip for fermenter link
  9. Hydrometer link
  10. Hydrometer 14″ Plastic Test Jar link
  11. Bottle capper link
  12. Bottle filler link
  13. Bottle brush link
  14. Campden tablets link
  15. Whirlfloc tablets link
eHERMS Build, Keezer

New projects

I stared a post called new projects in June 2015, all it had was three additions I wanted to make to the brewery. I promptly forgot about it until today while looking through draft posts. Funny enough the three items are three of my more resent adds to the brewery.

  • Heating for fermentation
  • A beer gun for bottling
  • A pressurized racking system

I do heat my new brewing space but unless I am working in the space it is only in the 40s or 50s mid-winter. This means I need to heat my fermentation chamber. I am using the same FermWrap I use in the Keezer. This will also be useful for trying the new Norwegian Kveik yeast strains. These like to ferment hot and are very interesting and very different then the yeast I am used to. Check out Larsblog for info.

I finally splurged for a Blickman beer gun. I normally gravitate to DIY options and there are certainly lots of options to build a home made beer gun or counter pressure filler. In this case Blickman’s solution is very slick and what I can build with generic parts would not be as nice by a wide margin. For the price and savings of mine time researching/building/troubleshooting etc its a bargain.

The last item is focused on limiting oxygen exposure during transferring to kegs. This is detailed in a separate post.

Brewing Log

Summer Brewing Plans

Is time to build up the pipe line.  I just had three kegs kick recently.  I  currently have a fresh keg of dry Irish stout and Cascades and Oranges Pale on tap.  The cider and Citra Pale are nearly empty and I have nothing to back it up.

1. IPA – ScrapsIPA has been brewed and is fermenting in the chamber.
2. Munich Helles – Up next and will take up my fermentation chamber for a while.  Potential recipe.
3. Saison – Once the IPA is kegged the Saison will be brewed and wont need the fermentation chamber but will need a heating mat. Potential recipe.
4. Coconut Porter – Can be brewed and placed in the basement. Potential recipe.