Brewing, cleaning and all grain?

Some say brewing beer is like cooking, if you can follow directions you can brew beer. One big difference is you usually eat what you cooked fairly soon. A 5 gallon batch of beer might be around for a while. So its very important that after the beer cools below 170F you are very sanitary. Here are a few of my brew day tips.

Tip 0 - Clean it. Something can not be sanitized unless its clean. Use a good cleaner. I also recommend switching cleaners every few batches. I feel this makes sure any bugs don't develop a resistance and if one cleaner lacks in an area then the other might make up for it. However one good cleaning product might work also.

Tip 1 - Use a good sanitizer! I use Star San from Five star chemicals. It sanitizes very quickly, about 30 seconds. The foam will sanitize also. You can re-use it until its soiled or the PH drops below 3.2. You can spray it on gas connections and if they bubble then you have a leak. I usually have a tub of sanitizer sitting next to me so I can dip things in.

Tip 2 - Cover it! After you sanitize something like a carboy, wort chiller or bottles you should cover them. I use aluminum foil or plastic wrap. Minimize pet traffic and air flow if you can also.

Tip 3 - Chill fast. Once you are below 170F you are at risk of contamination. Chill quickly with a wort chiller or an ice bath. If using an ice bath make sure you have plenty of ice. Cooling works best if there is a good temperature differential.

Tip 4 - A healthy fermentation can make up for some sanitation issues. Its a competition between your yeast and other stuff so favor the yeast.

Roggenbier fermenting

Well I brewed a partial mash clone of Schell's Roggenbier this weekend. This was about 4 lbs of grain, the most grain I have ever partial mashed. I decided to break out a cooler and use my two grain bags. Previously I had just mashed in the pot. Well I missed my mash temp a bit, 148 instead of 152 range. I could not add more water since I still only have a 4 gallon brew kettle. Schell's does a step mash with these steps:

• 95F 5 minutes
• 113F 20 Minutes
  
• 144F 10 minutes
  
• 162F 30 Minutes
  
• 172F mash out
  

After that it was pretty good. As always I forgot to take an OG before pitching and darned if I was going to try after that. I'm fermenting it at 62 for the first several days then will ramp it to 68 over several days.

Free as in Beer Kits

I won a beer ingredient kit from the Brew Bubbas podcast. They had a contest for contest ideas and I submitted several. My idea of a beer with local ingredient won! I just heard they are sending me a California Common Kit from their brew log Craig and Jerry are great guys and their podcast is great for every level of brewer. They are real down to earth guys with lots of respect for the craft and life in general.

BeerXML SDK Project

BeerXML is a standard for storing beer recipes. Some applications and sites can read and export recipes in this format however the compliance to the standard varies WIDELY. A while back I wrote a BeerXML parser for our club web site so we can post recipes. Doing so I said wow there should be some tools to help developers out. So I asked around and posted some messages on blogs asking if anyone wants to form an open source project. After getting two replies I decided to create this Google group. BeerXML SDK to aid in the groups communication and planning.

Current languages represented:
ColdFusion
C#
Java
Ruby

Anyone is welcome to join. The main goal is to make some SDK's to help import BeerXML into native objects and data types. Other goals are exporting and other tools to work with the objects.
However this is all up for discussion.

The Belgianish Ale Project - Update

Fermentation is going strong at day 11 since the first feeding. I ramped up to 72F over several days and its been there for the last several days.

Feedings #?
Well as always time got away from me and I was not able to brew a 3rd batch of wort to feed it and since its so far along I'd rather not expose it to any O2.

Just for review I went from a week old starter to the first wort feeding of a 1051 OG wort. After 3 days I added a 1095 OG wort and ramped the fermentation temp up from 68 to 72. Might bump to 73 here since its still going.

The Belgianish Ale Project - Feeding a fermentation

Well after listening to an interview with Sean Paxton the homebrew chef talking about how Rochefort brews their beers I decided to try an experiment. Rochefort brews 4 days and pitches the entire yeast on day 1 and adds the wort, then adds more wort the following days. They are doing this on a 1078OG beer. So I wanted to try something like this and partial because I have a 1500ml Wyeast Belgian Ale 1214 starter that was ready but did not have the time to brew with yet. So I brewed up a 1 gallon belgian style 1050 OG wort to feed to the starter. In a day or two I'm going to feed it (add to it) another wort in the 1095 OG+ range. I'd like to feed it one more time to build it up to a little over 3 gallons of around a 1080 beer. I might also feed it belgian candi syrup (dark) after that but prob only if I have time and only if its active fermentation.

Feeding 1 recipe (brewed 7/21)

Feeding 2 recipe (brewed 7/24)

Feeding 3 - life got in the way and did not do this.

Feeding 4 - ???

3 gallon batches of beer

Most homebrew batches are 5 gallons of beer. However for a long time now I have been doing smaller batches like one, two and three gallon batches. I've really come to like the three gallon batches. They fit in a 5 gallon carboy with no blow off of overflow. They are about 30 bottles so just right for having some to share/trade but enough to have some of your own. As you might guess, I still bottle. So bottling 30 bottles saves some time. Also I just did two 3 gallon batches at once. I find that I can brew more often yet get a good amount of beer still. It also saves a bit.

To accomplish this I use hopville.com for formulating and scaling recipes. I keep the percentages and OG, IBU and stats as close as I can. Sometimes its hard to keep SRM the same as some quantities do not split nicely. Hopeville.com does not do grams either so sometimes the spec'd recipe is a bit off from brewday. Overall I have had great success in small batches. You do have to watch the pitching rate but 3 gallons for a smack pack or vial is a good amount.

I'm also looking a making a 2 liter bottle keg.

Pomegranate Saison?

A couple weeks ago when I bottled the Saison Du Mont from the big brew I added pomegranate juice to a bit of it. Last night I opened one. For starters I had targeted 3 volumes with the priming sugar before adding the juice, needless to say it was a little over carbonated. After the foaming out of the bottle was done I tasted it. Below are my notes.

Appearance: It is more cloudy than the normal batch. Pectin?

Aroma: a flowery aroma and then that Belgian funk with some citrus.

Taste: Its a bit more tart than the normal batch and you can't really taste any fruit.

Mouthfeel: Its very smooth and a bit creamy on the tongue. The extra carbonation maybe or perhaps more body.

Wife test: My wife liked this version compared to the normal batch.

Overall I think we need to do a side by side next time. If I did this again I'd back off on the priming sugar for the juiced batch.

Brew on

Free Beer Label

I made a label for the Saison Du Mont beer the club made for Big Brew. Anyone interested can download it for free. Visit the RAZE site for the free beer label. This was made from a Saison label I found online and I modified the lettering, created new letter and other things. It prints out very nicely.

Hop Rhizomes

Well 7 of my 8 rhizomes I planted are doing great. Many of them are twisting up the twine trellis. I had ordered 4 and 4 were from a brew club member. Both sets were stored in the fridge over a week before planting. I soaked the rhizome in water about 30 min before planting. Planted them in April, still cold in MN. I put them just 2" down. A couple weeks later sprouts. Now they are about 18" or more tall. It seems like they grew faster once they were around the swine. Unless that's just because they are more established. Well I should have Hallertau, Fuggles and Centennial this fall.

Bottled Meads

I bottled two meads last night. A sparkling Blueberry mead that tasted pretty good at bottling. The other was a vanilla mead that had a rubberband flavor. I had added the bean in at primary fermentation and not sure that was a good idea. Or the off flavor could have been the yeast. I used a german wheat beer yeast. The wine yeast BM45, I used in the blueberry makes great melomel.