The Beer League

Last night, I decided to crack open another bottle of the Special Bitter. While my palate isn’t very well trained, I think I detected a bit of tartness- at first I thought it was due to tannin extraction, but chatting with the guys, the consensus is that the beer might be infected. I hope not- but I’ll bring a bottle and have zee and snafui taste it to confirm. Damn- I was looking forward to this one.

In the meantime, I need to try to figure out how it got infected. This was the only batch I fermented in a bucket, and since it was stuck- I had to open the top multiple times to test it, stir it, etc. That is where I think the infection came from- if in fact, it is infected and I just don’t recognize and expected flavor in a special bitter.

Also, the frequency of posting has not been consistent nor often enough- something that I hope to remedy.

Until next time…

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Well, we’ve been drinking the Mild Ale for a little while, and it seems to be aging nicely. I do need to get some bottles over to some of the other Beer League guys for their assessment. last night, though, I dropped by my neighbor’s house with a bottle of the Mild, a bottle of my Harpoon IPA clone, and the Special Bitter I have been struggling with. The Mild was very good, the IPA, while still a bit young (I bottled the IPA and the SB 5 days ago) was good- nice bitterness, good hops aroma and a good head. The Special Bitter, however, is apparently following its path of taking a verryyy looong time to go anywhere. While I know 5 days in the bottle is way too short- I’ve tried every beer I’ve bottled so far at around 5 days to check progress, and the bitter is the only one that still tasted more like wort than beer. We actually dumped it.

However, I must say that there are some really nice lower layer flavors there- so I am pretty hopefull that a few weeks or months out- the Special Bitter will taste really nice. Just not right now.

Tonight, it looks like I’ll be bottling my American Pale Ale - it’s hit a FG of 1.012 (target is 1.013) so it’s time- andshould be nice and smooth for some nice summer tasting.

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I finally decided it was time to bottle the Special Bitter- especially since it has been sitting in the bottling bucket since I repitched. Repitching didn’t do too much, but zee mentioned that I should have created a starter, and possibly let the started go for a little while to build up some alcohol tolerance in the yeast. By pitching the vial directly in- it was quite possible that the alcohol killed the yeast. My instinct yesterday was to chuck the batch- but then I won’t learn anything, right? So- I bottled it. There was a bit of solids periodically that I saw through the bottling tube that I anticipate will just settle to the bottom of the bottles. The recipe called for a CO2 volume of 1.5 to 2, so I added about 2 oz of corn sugar to 1 cup of water, boiled it and mixed it in. I used ProMash to calculate how much sugar to use. The results were in weights measures, and I wanted to use  dry measure. I found this nice, easy, conversion site. There is a slight difference in weight and dry measurements, but it appears close enough to not matter. Also- I need to verify whether ProMash expresses the sugar amount in weight or volume.

Next up was the Harpoon IPA clone. I cleaned and disinfected everything to avoid any possible cross contamination between batches, and added just under 3/4 cup of corn sugar/boiled water. Since my volumes were pretty low on these batches, between the two I only yielded 33 bottles total, while the potential, had I hit my volumes, should have been a total of  52 bottles.

Pretty much the same amount of work- just not as much beer to drink. Boo.

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I finally impulsively ordered a barley crusher. I am picking up a 50 lb bag of 2-row malt, and I have a few pounds of specialty grains- none of which are crushed. So- unless I want to truck down to snafui’s every time I need to brew- I needed a way to do it myself. I ended up placing my order with Beer Smith. Aside from Pro Mash software, I have also been testing Beer Smith software as well. It appears to be updated more often, has a very active forum, and they sell a popular model of grain mill. Their pricing was very competitive as well- so last night I ordered one.

Can’t wait till it gets here…

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Well- finally a nice day where I have little else to do but brew! I am brewing an American Pale Ale from the BCS book of course. Luckily, I checked the errata page and found that the hops amounts printed in the book were incorrect. Right now, I have 6 minutes left to mash-in. I’ll update as I go along…

UPDATE: Overall, my smoothest brewday ever. I got close to the proper volume I needed (6.75 gals preboil) with an OG of 1.044. I needed to hit 1.048, so I figured I’d extend the boil to get to the proper post boil OG of 1.056. At the end of the 60 minute boil, I was only at 1.052, so I extended 15 minutes. I was still a bit low, so added another 15 minutes, for a total of 90 minutes boil. At that point, I hit 1.056 exactly, and my volume into the fermenter was  proper- looks to be about 5 gals. Unfortunately, I forgot to measure the final, into the fermenter volume.

I did, however, take some notes on my mash-in and sparge, as follows:

1st run (mash in):            OG:   1.072         4.3 gals in to mash           Volume to kettle: 2.75 gal        Water out: 64%

2nd run (batch sparge)   OG:   1.044        4.3 gals sparge                  Volume to kettle: 4.00 gal         Water out: 93%    TOTAL: 6.75 gallons

So- I am now getting better knowledge of my system- we’ll check the numbers next time, and hopefully they will be darn close.

Until next time- I still have some other batches to write about…

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Last night, it was time to bottle my Mild Ale (Through a Mild Darkly from BCS). Looks nice and clear (first batch using Whirfloc) and the OG has been steady at 1.014 for 3 days. Slightly high by .001 but I think she’s ready. At the same time, I was trying to decide what to do with my stuck Special Bitter. Turns out, both brews used WLP001 yeast- so the light bulb went off. After bottling the mild, I harvested yeast and made starter, which I will pitch into the special bitter- hopefully that will take and it will finish off it’s fermentation.

One can hope….

As for the mild ale- initial taste is pretty good- nice and malty, slightly slightly smoky. While I normally bottle into 22 oz bottles- I made a 12 oz bottle which I’ll try in a week to see how it tastes after a little conditioning.

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Hey folks- a long weekend coming up. What is everybody brewing this weekend? If you are not brewing, are you kegging, bottling or something else?
Post in the comments…

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Neat- yesterday zee (Thanks zee!) and I put up some posts in the hop garden. The day before, I checked my hops mounds and found that 7 of the 12 rhizomes I planted are coming up. Two of those rhizomes I just planted Friday- 7 of the original 10 are on their way. Right now, they vary from 1″ to about 6″ tall.  Today, I strung up some twine so I can begin training them. Unfortunately, the soil where I live is pretty rocky and sandy, so I will be adding some manure, fertilizer and such in the near future. So, without further ado, I bring you some pics…

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What a day! I kicked on the propane burner at 9 am sharp to get some water heated up to warm my mash tun. I brewed a Robust Porter. My first beer ever was a Robust Porter last year at this time. It came out great and I just tried a bottle of it that was a year old and was amazed at how it aged. So naturally I want more! Plus the first porter was done with malt extract, this time I’m proving my skill with all-grain brewing. My goal in doing a robust porter now is to practice it so that later I can brew a chocolate hazelnut porter. It’s pretty much the robust porter recipe with some hazelnut extract and tons of dark cocoa powder. The key to brewing fruit or spiced beers is to brew the base beer well. You can’t make a shitty beer better by adding flavors after the fact! And if I make a good porter now, it can sit in a keg and age for a few months for autumn. MMmmm
Brewing the robust porter went well. Nothing really extraordinary happened. Toward the end of the boil I got real busy though. I needed to keg a finished Blonde Ale (which turned out excellent). My goal was to use the yeast from the blonde ale to ferment the porter and IPA. To do that I needed to keg the blonde leaving all the yeast behind.
With the blonde kegged I then needed to start the IPA — all while the porter was still going. So I had 2 brews going on at once plus kegging a 3rd. With a little running around, the usual assault of random cuts and burns, and lack of eating I eventually got the blond kegged, IPA started, and finished up the porter.
Next came the rye IPA. Just like the porter it was fairly uneventful at first. I hit all my mash temps, hit my gravities, etc. Unfortunately I was using a kettle that had no gallon markings on it so I didn’t actually know how much wort I had collected before I started boiling. As the IPA finished boiling I checked and my gravity was WAY off, too low. I turned the burner up to full blast and boiled the shit out of it, evaporating a lot more water. It boiled for 30 min longer that I should have but got close to my target gravity.
With both the porter and IPA I could only chill it to about 72 without wasting an imperial assload of water. So they both sat for some time in a bucket of icewater til they hit 68 degrees. While chilling I aerated the wort with my sterile air pump. When at temp and aerated I split the yeast from the blonde ale in half and poured half into each fermenter.
All in all it took me 9.5 hours from setup to clean.
This morning, not even 12 hours from when I pitched the yeast they were super active! By this afternoon the IPA was ready to explode from the fermenter so I rigged up a blow-off tube. I’m keeping an eye on the porter, hoping I don’t wake up to a mess tomorrow cuz I don’t have a second blowoff tube.
Hopefully by Thursday the blonde ale will be done carbonating. It’s super good and I’m excited! A perfect beer for summer.

-Gerry

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Well, last week I checked my special bitter, and it’s SG was at 1.022. Since it started at 1.044, I figured that, while it appeared to be a slow ferment, at least it was fermenting. However, I have now tested it again- 1 week later- and it is STILL at 1.022. Damn!

After a bit of reading, it seems that a way to kick the fermentation again is by adding enzymes, beta amylase- but I need to do some more reading. This page has some interesting information.

Any comments or ideas are most welcome

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