zymurgy4all

Since I purchased a freezer and temp controller, I’ve been wanting to do a lager. This in addition to the hop shortage led me to a traditional German Bock, since it requires only a small amount of bittering hops. I already have a lot of magnum, so hops are not an issue for this beer.

I began by measuring the grain, and I made a mistake that changed the beer from this point on. I measured out the grain, and the last one was supposed to be a 300L dark grain that I used Chocolate malt for. I needed 8 oz, but mistakenly poured several pounds on top of my grain (the bucket I was measuring from, as opposed to the scoop). I realized it after I poured it in, when it was already too late. To solve the problem, I scooped off as much as I could that wasn’t mixed and put it back. Then I created a mix bag of grains, reducing it to the lowest ratio possible of chocolate malt to the base malt. The end result was I had a little too much chocolate malt making it more of a chocolate bock.

I made a five liter starter using my home made stir plate pictured on the left. Once it reached maximum concentration (nice foam on top), I cooled it in the fridge. This makes the yeast go to the bottom creating a white band at the bottom of the vase. I stirred it up again to get all the yeast back into suspension before pitching it.

Although I knew the grain bill wasn’t perfect, I went ahead with the 10 gallon batch. My son Aaron is shown here helping me scoop grain out and put it in my grain mill as I crush it using a drill. I mashed for an hour, and since I didn’t hit the target temperature I did a small decoction by taking out a pound or so of grain, and boiled it and added it back to the mash. I eventually got it up to about 153F before I mashed out. I transferred about 14 gallons to the boil pot, and boiled for 90 minutes. I lost about 2 gallons due to evaporation, putting the final amount at around 12 gallons. The picture shows the counter-flow chiller being gravity fed. I believe this is far more efficient than immersion chilling, since the wort goes from boiling to the temperature of tap water as the wort siphons out.

It took a while to ferment at 50F–four weeks until it hit 1.022. I let it raise up to about 65F to help it finish, and it just continued to ferment very slowly. I eventually got it down to 1.018.

The finished product was great–a bock with a chocolate flavor in it. I have actually enjoyed it in three forms–the first keg that I chilled after 5 weeks, another keg that it fermented in for several weeks later, and a third keg (2-3 gallons), that I let it sit in a carboy for more time. The best was the second keg, and the worst was the third. I think the third sat for too long at too high of a temperature without a lot of yeast activity, and it tastes oxidized. It is drinkable, but just not as good as the first two kegs. I’ll have to pay attention to oxygen contact when dealing with less than 5 gallon transfers.

Next on deck: Smoked Sour and Cream Ale split batch between two different yeasts.

No Comments »
Filed under: Brew Log, Equipment

Well last week I had the unique opportunity to go to Stone Brewery just outside of San Diego, CA. The picture on the left is a view from their garden into the restaurant and bar. Behind the restaurant and bar is the brewery.
I only had Arrogant Bastard a few times (back in Texas), and never dreamed I would be in their brewery. Fortunately my Aunt and Uncle Susan and David live in Ramona, and brought me there to take to tour and have dinner. The picture to the right is my Uncle David and I enjoying a Smoked Porter and Pliney The elder respectively.

This was a fantastic tour of a microbrewery. I was able to sample various Stone beers like Stone Smoked Porter, a Belgian Trippel, Pliney, a Pale Ale, and Double Bastard. All of them were excellent.

The tour started off quite well with a few homebrewers in our group. The tour guide had a glass of their pale ale that he said was for example, but he drank it and then said that we couldn’t drink until the end of the tour. He then said that their brewery upholds their Arrogance (as in Arrogant Bastard Ale), and that was part of it. He walked us through from milling the grain and water purification to fermentation. I found the water purification particularly interesting, since a lot of homebrewers don’t worry too much about this step. He spent a few minutes talking about how the Escondido water is not world known, so they make the water good by using Reverse Osmosis, chlorine removal, and combining the two to get a water that has some minerals, and is very clean. The horizontal tubes are the RO membranes for the system.
They also mentioned that before this high-speed system, they used to do things a lot more manually, like using egg timers on the equipment, and sitting there watching them, so they could react once the timer went off. Now they get a nice alarm from a computer, and the process stops automatically. The egg timer thing is pretty close to homebrewing for sure!
The picture on the right is one my uncle took–his camera was quite a bit better than mine, and he got some really good equipment shots.

Overall the system is pretty well automated, and he said it didn’t come with much of a manual, so as long as nothing breaks or stops working, it is pretty easy to run. They punch in the numbers (grains in pounds, mash temp, etc), and the computer alerts them once each stage is complete. This is their third brewery, which has tripled in size each time they moved. The brewing setup was installed by brewing builders from Germany.

At the end, we sampled a few different Stone beers. They have three different yeast strains–probably a US-05/American Ale 1056 equivalent for most of their beers. They also have a Belgian Trappist strain that they made a great Belgian Trippel with. I was probably most impressed with the Smoked Porter. I think it was the best smoked beer I’ve ever had. They did a great job of balancing it so that the smoke was pleasant, and not overpowering. It was in the aroma as well as the flavor. I also finally got to try the Double Bastard, which I tried to get in Texas, but was never able to do so. Hopefully I will get the chance to have some more of the great Stone beers again in the future!

No Comments »
Filed under: Blogroll, Brewery Adventures

Homebrewers have a distinct advantage over Microbreweries in that they can truly make any beer they want, to include beers that are extremely rare. Since the Hop shortage, my interest in brewing an old world beer called a Gruit has increased. So finally, after brewing for many years, I decided to brew this strange beer.

One of the harder parts about this beer was finding the ingredients. In the old way of brewing it, ingredients were picked locally. Over time, there became some commonly used ones: Mugwort, Yarrow, Marsh Rosemary (or Wild Rosemary), and Sweet Gale. I was able to get Mugwort (left) and yarrow(right) from the natural food store, Dayspring in Auburn. John helped me out with the Sweet Gale, and I was out of luck with the Wild Rosemary, so I just omitted it.

I made a tea with the ingredients to get an idea what each one tasted like, and was quite surprised. The Yarrow has some great bittering qualities, and was very difficult to drink (ever try to taste hop pellets?). Mugwort had an interesting potpourri/Christmas spice kind of flavor. Sweet gale tasted sweet, and will make for a great flavoring hop.
So my recipe I made up (partly a pantry challenge–I was using up some old grain) is this:

5.59 lb German Pale Malt
2 lb CaraMunich 70L
1 lb CaraPils
.25 lbs Carafa I (Dehusked)
.5 lb Light Brown Sugar

Yeast: Wyeast Weihenstephan (2L Yeast starter made from my Dunkelweizen)

Spices:
1 oz Yarrow @ 60 minutes
1 oz Mugwort @ 60 minutes
1 oz Sweet Gale @ 15 minutes

I mashed for 1 hour at 150 degrees, and boiled it for 75 minutes

I lost a lot of water in this boil (it was cold so I had a longer heat up time and I was using my full size sanke keg boil pot). My runoff was just shy of 7 gallons, and I ended up with just over 4 gallons of wort!

OG was 1.048.

I plan to follow up with some tasting notes of this strange beer!

Brewed: 19 Jan 2008.

1 Comment »
Filed under: Blogroll, Brew Log

This is what I have in the fermenter now: Peach Ale. It is adopted from the Austin Homebrew Supply Recipe, but due to a lack of wheat I had to change it a little. This is what I used:

16lb 2-row Bries
1lb Wheat
1lb Cara Pils
2lb Caramel

I mashed for about 55 minutes at 150 degrees. 15 minutes into the boil, I added 1 ounce of Perl Pellet hops, then 1 hour later I added 1ounce of Liberty and Irish Moss, and 10 minutes later I added 1 ounce of Liberty for flavoring. I got 1.043 og at 72 degrees, and the batch size came out to be about 12 gallons.

The hard part about this brew is it was about 103 degrees outside by my thermometer, and cooling the wort was a long process. I was able to get it to 84 degrees and had to put it in the fermenter because I had to leave. I put the fermenters in the bathtub and when I got home I added ice to help cool it. Once it was down to about 74, I pitched the yeast. They are bubbling well now about 24 hours later, and are sitting at about 68 degrees.

I plan to use the peach flavoring in one, and real peaches in the other. I’m not sure how I’m going to do the real peach yet, but I’m going to figure it out!

2 Comments »
Filed under: Brew Log