Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Helpful Brewing Tips


Some basic useful tips I've come across:

• Measure and prepare the night before.

• Clean while you're waiting around. This saves a lot of time.

• Types of boil
• Hydrometer Adjustment
Does your hydrometer reading seem way off? Check the temperature of the wort you're measuring. Quite often when you measure the pre-boil gravity the wort temperature is much higher than what the hydrometer is calibrated for. You can adjust the reading using an online calculator - Hydrometer Calculator

• BIAB bags are not just for using this brewing style. You can use a bag in regular mash to help avoid stuck sparges.

• Always wrap the top of your immersion chiller with a towel. Just in case it leaks.

• Save the headache of soaking bottles in a bucket of star-san. Use a bottle rinser instead.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Yeast Cake Reuse - Part 1- The Cider Experiment -

I've been brewing every week or other week for the past 12 months and one thing that constantly bothers me is how much yeast I throw away after I bottle. Surely I can make better use of this yeast cake?

The driving factor behind this was laziness. How can I do create something super simple, cheap, fast that would also taste good.

The ingredients:


  • Apple Juice Concentrate - 1 can
  • Peach Nectar - 1.05 quarts
  • Apple Juice - 6 quarts

The Process

After racking the beer out of the carboy I simply put the stopper back on. I did leave a tiny layer of beer. Once I finished bottling I used a sanitized funnel and poured all of the ingredients directly into the carboy, then capped it with the stopper. I placed this back into my freezer/fermentation chamber at 67 degrees.

 
I left this in the chamber for one week until the primary fermentation finished. I then left the carboy in the basement at around 70 degrees for another week. Next, I racked into a bottling bucket using another container of peach nectar in place of the bottling sugar, and bottled.

I had used several 12 oz bottles for testing bottles. After 2 weeks the first taste of the cider was not promising. It had a horrible smell and taste which I've narrowed down to acetaldehyde. Using the peach nectar as priming sugar left a ton of sediment at the bottom of each bottle.

I tried several more bottles over the course of the next month and a half. It took approximately twelve weeks for this off flavor to completely dissipate. What was left was a dry cider, with a slightly hoppy taste to it, and a slight peach flavor to it. It was drinkable and somewhat pleasing with a decent amount of alcohol.



I will give this another try soon. I will leave the cider to ferment a minimum of four weeks, maybe six.


Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Podcasts

I have a 30 minute commute to work. This is where I've obtained most of my brewing knowledge. I've reset my phone a few times and lost my list of podcasts that I've listened to. So here's the list for anyone that's interested and for me in the future when i reset my phone again.




Saturday, December 20, 2014

Brew Day Problems

It seems that getting through a brew day without a single mishap is a rarity. If I made it through one unscathed I'd be concerned at what went wrong that I didn't notice. Luckily today's issue weren't too terrible.

For my first mishap I dropped a pound of my specialty grains all over the garage floor. Luckily I had the same amount of them on hand and measured already.

For my second mishap, this was my 4th BIAB batch in the new kettle bought specifically for it.   I noticed this right near the end of the boil.



It made me sad. Only 4 brews in! It held up through the rest of the boil and chilling. This is how it looks after clean up.



I ordered this kettle through amazon. I simply went on to the site, found the order and filled out a replacement request. A new one is on its way. Hopefully I just had a bad one and the next one doesn't have the same issue.

This is the kettle. I'm sure i'll be posting about it again:
Bayou Classic 1124 24-Quart All Purpose Stainless Steel Stockpot with Steam and Boil Basket

6/29/2015 - Just wanted to follow up and say the replacement kettle has held up well and there was no cost from amazon for replacement!

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

3 Gallon BIAB Method

Now that winter is just about here, brewing outdoors has become less appealing. I have decided to move my operations indoors. For me this means scaling down to a 3 gallon BIAB process for two reasons; my stove won't fit my outdoor kettle and won't heat it either. I wasn't able to find much information about doing a smaller 3 gallon batch size for BIAB which is why I put this post together.

Equipment Required:
Recipe: Brew Brew Brew Brew Brew aka 5 Brew - 3 Gallon BIAB

My daughter Helena named this one. She claims it's all I ever talk about. I created this recipe in BeerSmith Mobile from a 5 gallon recipe that I have had success with in the past and scaled it down for 3 gallons.
  • 6lb 8oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US
  • 7.8 oz Munich Malt
  • 5.2 oz Cara-Pils
  • .35 oz Columbus (60 min)
  • .35 oz Columbus (10 min)
  • .35 oz Simcoe (10 min)
  • 1/4 teaspoon irish moss (10 min)
  • .64 oz Simcoe (0 min) - steep 20 min or until 190 degrees
  • Safale US-05 - 1 packet
OG: 1.061
FG: 1.010
IBUs: 53.4
ABV: 6.72%

The Process:

1. Fill the bottling bucket with approximately 4.785 gallons of water. I have decent water, nothing needs to be added or removed from it. Skip this if you're able to measure directly in your kettle.
2. Transfer the water to the kettle and heat to 159 degrees.
3. Turn off the heat, add crushed grains, mix well, take several temperature readings, cover, fold bag over the top of the lid. I measured 151 degrees in several spots after mixing. For once hit my target mash temperature throughout.
4. Mash at 151 degrees for 60 minutes. 

5. At 20 minutes and 40 minutes into the mash I turned the burner on for 2 minutes, gave the mash a quick stir.
6. After the mash remove the bag and strainer from the kettle, turn the burner on to get the boil going. Place the bag over the bottling bucket(see picture) and give it several good squeezes. Careful as it will be hot. Empty this wort back into the kettle. You'll want to take a gravity reading and note the amount of wort collected so that you can determine your efficiency.

7. Next up, once you reach a rolling boil, keep it going for 60 minutes and follow the hop schedule. During this process clean and sanitize the bottling bucket. I prepare 5 gallons of starsan and leave it in the bottling bucket. I leave the sieve and wort chiller in the bucket as well to sanitize them.

8. After the boil and hop stand cool the wort to as close to 70 (pitching/fermentation temp) as you can. At this point remember that anything that's going to touch the wort must be sanitized. For my process I make sure it has been in contact with Starsan for at least 2 minutes. Take your original gravity reading.

9. Transfer the starsan into the carboy. Pour the wort through the sanitized sieve into the clean and sanitized bottling bucket. The sieve helps clear out most of the trub and hops that you might not want in the fermenter. It gets messy toward the end, be sure you're able to easily clear out the sieve a few times. Using the sieve also helps aerate the wort. Once in the bottling bucket take a gravity reading.

10. Last steps are to transfer the wort from the bottling bucket into the sanitized carboy. Aerate the wort (shake the carboy for as long as you can stand doing it, or 5 minutes) and then finally pitch the yeast and give a quick shake as well. I've read and watched many mixed methods of doing this. This one has worked well for me. Place in your fermentation chamber. 
The trub settled down to below the bottom line by the next day.

Notes:
I was a bit short at the end on the amount collected and I overshot my gravity. I ended up adding around 2 quarts of boiled water that I had chilled to room temp. I will adjust my numbers for next time to try to avoid this. In the mash photo you can see there is around 1 gallon of space to play around with. Once I get the numbers right, i'll post the equipment profile for BeerSmith. The entire process took around 3 hours. 

Tuesday, December 2, 2014