Saturday, December 26, 2015

Nut Brown Ale

Trying a new layout for the recipe. Thanks to Brülosophy for the inspiration.

Brewday: 12/25/15

Extract with specialty grains kit from Northern Brewer. First, the numbers.


BATCH SIZEBOIL TIMEIBUSRMEST. OGEST. FGABV
5 gal60 min13.75 IBUs19.58 SRM  1.044   1.012 4.3 %
Heated 4 gal of 2x filtered water in the kettle to 160. My in-laws have a filtered tap on their kitchen sink. The water runs through a filter and softener in the basement, then up to the 2nd filter under the sink. I have no idea about the water chemistry of their area, but so far it's made 3 really good batches of beer.


Added steeping grains, down to 156. Let steep for 20 mins. Down to 154. 



0.25 lb UK Chocolate
0.25 lb Special B
0.25 lb Biscuit
0.25 lb US Special Roast

a very full kettle

6 lb Amber LME - 60 mins
1 oz UK Fuggles hop pellets 3.8% AA - 60 mins
1 tablet Whirlfloc - 15 mins
Killed the heat, whirlpooled, and set kettle in metal bucket for ice bath. Emptied the ice maker to get down to 83 in about 25 mins (cold garage). Forgot the double-mesh strainer at home, so dumped kettle into 6 gal fermenting bucket to aerate and further cool the wort. Let the hop sludge setting, then poured into a 6.5 gal Big Mouth glass carboy. Topped with about 1.5 gal of cold water to bring volume up to 5 gal and bring temp to 72. I ended up with a SG of 1.045.
Pitched the entire 1.2 liter starter of Wyeast British Ale 1098 that I made up the day before.


Brought the carboy home and put it into the Cool Brewing fermenting bag to hold at 68. By morning, there was a healthy krausen.


12 hrs post pitch

Added 1/2 tsp of gelatin (re-hydrated) on 1/04/15, once FG had been achieved. Krausen had fallen back into the beer and it smelled like a brown ale. Put in keezer to cold crash at 40 deg for 2 days before hooking up to CO2.



Day 12



After 3 days at 25 psi. Serving at 10 psi.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

First Hard Cider

Brew Day: 12/09/15


My wife really loves hard cider, and I'm learning to really appreciate it as well. So to keep harmony in our house and have a wonderful beverage over the holidays, I decided to test my cider "skills". I use the terms skills lightly as this is my first hard cider I've ever attempted.



I visited my local homebrew shop, Northern Brewer, and picked up a cider kit by Brewer's Best. The kit makes 6 gallons, which I will rack into a 5 gallon keg. I only have 15 days until Christmas, so my goal is to have it ferment out completely and be force carbonated in time for my in-law's Christmas eve party.


Fermentation Update: 12/16/15

Due to the heat given off by fermentation, I decided to use my Cool Brewing bag after day 2. We're on the 3rd floor of our apartment building which makes the ambient temp, even in December, in the low 70's. Using frozen water bottles, which I swapped out twice a day, I was able to keep the fermentation temp in the upper 60's. If I had 2 liter sized frozen bottles, they would've lasted 24 hours before being changed but we don't drink much soda, so we didn't have any empty 2 liters around. Gave me another excuse to check on the cider each morning/evening.



Bag resting underneath the table.


To show how much room is inside.


No fermometer on the bucket, just put a fridge
thermometer in the bag to watch temps.



I'm not going to list the entire recipe. You can see that HERE, but I did record my process. Below is the video I shot in my kitchen while following the kit's directions and generally trying not to make a mess of the place (that apple concentrate is sticky stuff). But first, here's the numbers:

OG: 1.048
FG: 1.004
Actual ABV: 5.4%


Watch on YouTube by clicking HERE


Christmas Serving Update: 12/25/15

The keg carbed up nicely in time for Christmas day. 4 of the 6 people in attendance really liked it. One of the nay-sayers doesn't like hard cider, and the other one is just figuring out what drinks she likes and wanted something sweeter. I'll call those figures a win. It was suggested we do a side-by-side with the Angry Orchard we had in the basement fridge, but by the time dinner was over, we were too stuffed and already fighting off a cider, beer, port buzz.

I added 1/2 tsp of gelatin once FG had been reached and let it sit 2 days before kegging. It came out nicely clear and bubbly.



Have you tried gelatin in your beer or cider? Let me know in the comments.


Monday, December 14, 2015

Temperature Testing

Thanks to Craigslist and the abundance of local homebrewers here in Minnesota, I've been able to procure a few new pieces of equipment. Today I am testing them to see how well they hold temperature.

Cool Brewing Fermentation Bag

The folks at Cool Brewing came up with an insulated bag design big enough for carboys and fermenters that can keep the fermenting wort cool by the use of frozen water bottles. It's big enough to fit a 6 gal carboy and the airlock and fit plenty of frozen water bottles. I filled up a 6 gallon carboy with 5 gallons of water, and took advantage of the chilly MN weather to cool it rapidly to 70 (room temp). Then I put the carboy into the Cool Brewing Fermentation Bag with one 12 oz bottle and one 32 oz frozen water bottle, as that's all I had frozen at the time I decided to do this experiment.




After 16 hours, I checked on the temp and it had come down to 64, and the ice bottles had melted. If I were to swap out the bottles, I'm confident I could keep it at that temp for as long as I needed to. Seems well made and water tight. This will be getting some use with my next batch.


48 Liter Picnic Cooler ~ Mash Tun

Also a Craigslist find. The original owner created a spout using a 3D printer (pretty cool!) and installed a stainless braided hose which will help stop the grain from flowing into my boil kettle. After getting some heat resistant tubing and ball valve from a local plumbing supply store, my new mash tun is fully operational.

I heated up 4 gallons of water to 170 and poured it into the mash tun. After giving the water a brief stir, I was down to 164. This will help me to understand and calculate how much heat loss I will get when transferring strike/sparge water. I closed the lid and let it sit for 60 mins, after which I was down to 155...a 9 deg drop. Too much. 



So I drained the water, which took 5 minutes (I timed it). When draining, I took note of how much water would drain on it's own. The drain is pretty near the bottom, but not all the way on the bottom. I rolled up a towel to put under the end of the cooler opposite the drain, and I was able to get all but a quart of water out. I was happy with this and now know to add 1 quart of water to my strike water calculation to account for what's left under the water level of the drain. I reheated it on the stove back up to 170. Then poured back into the mash tun to get a 2nd reading. This time I put a thick quilt over the top of the cooler to see how much heat I can retain with the added insulation layer. After 60 mins, still a 9 deg drop. A friend gave me an idea to use a piece of aluminum foil over the eventual grain bed during the mash to help with heat loss. I'll have to try that. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the cooler.