Category Archives: Recipe

Use-it-up Bitter

June 17, 2014British, Recipe, Reviewsadmin

The Maris Otter is almost gone. Seriously. And seeing as how it’s no longer cold outside a nice, simple, drinkable beer is required. Digging deep into Graham Wheeler’s Brew Your Own British Real Ale we came up with Big Lamp Bitter. Here we’ve adjusted the recipe for US/Standard measurements and added a few IBUs so that we don’t have any partial ounces of hops left-over.

Name: Big Lamp Bitter
Batch size: 5 gallons
Expected OG: 1.042
Expected FG: 1.010
Expected IBU: 30
Mash: 90m @ 152°F (Brew-in-a-bag)

  7.1 lbs Muntons Maris Otter 3L
    6 oz  Muntons Medium Crystal 60L

1 oz Goldings      5.5% AA @ 60m
Whirlfloc + yeast nutrient @ 10m
1 oz Fuggles       5.7% AA @  5m

1 pack Safale S-05 Yeast

OK, so it’s not really a traditional bitter since we’re using S-05 yeast instead of a real British variety. And we’re only hopping for 60 minutes while Wheeler adds the hops at the start of the 90 minute boil for all his recipes. But whatever.

The Brew

This time we decided to use the Brew-In-A-Bag (BIAB) method instead of the traditional 3-vessel setup, mostly to see if we’d hit the numbers and if the brew day would be shorter. If you’re not familiar with BIAB, here’s the basic process:

fill your kettle with the full pre-boil volume of water, plus whatever the grain will absorb
heat all the water to the strike temperature (be sure to use a calculator for this, since there’s more water the temperature will drop less than regular methods after adding the grain)
secure your bag in the kettle, then mill your grain and dump it into the bag
stir the grain in the bag to break up dough-balls
proceed with your mash
pull out the grain bag, optionally rinse to extract more sugars, and squeeze to get as much liquid as you can
proceed with your boil

In theory BIAB should take less time and less equipment, and for the most part that’s correct. We’ve actually done BIAB on this system before we finished building the HLT and the mash tun, so we have some data to go by.

We heated almost 9 gallons of strike water to 155°F and added the grain, which dropped the mash temperature to the expected 152°F and a pH of 5.6, which we adjusted to 5.4 with lactic acid. A half-hour into the mash the wort was 6°P. But now it was dinner time so we let the mash recirculate for a total of 2 hours. Upon return, after squeezing all the liquid we could out of the grain, we ended up with 8.5 gallons of 6.5°P (1.026) wort, while we actually wanted 8 gallons of 1.028 wort instead. Boil-off time!

After 30 minutes of boil-off, we had 8 gallons of 7°P wort (1.028) and started the real boil. Uneventful. 90 minutes later we had 5 gallons of 1.040 wort and an excellent hot break, all of which we dumped into the fermenter.

Did BIAB save us time? Yes, some, but not a lot. We keep trying to save time and never quite do it, so maybe the problem is us… Did we hit the numbers? No, not really, but we weren’t that far off. Had we mashed with less water, and boiled less vigorously, we may have gotten closer to the expected gravities. But did BIAB make cleanup easier? Definitely; only one kettle to scrub!

The Beer

10 days later, after fermenting around 65°F, we transferred the 1.009 beer to a keg. A week after that we had a light refreshing beer with a sessionable ABV of about 4%. It’s not very complex (obviously) but it’s a great summer beer. We’d brew this again, which means we Brewed It Right™.

Use-it-up Stout

May 7, 2014British, Recipeadmin

Continuing the fine tradition of using stuff up, our next attempt at disposing of the year-old Maris Otter and British hops is a stout.

Name: Stout
Batch size: 5 gallons
Expected OG: 1.062
Expected FG: 1.016
Mash: 90m @ 152F at 1.3 qt/lb

  9.25 lbs Muntons Maris Otter 3L
  1.0  lb  Briess Chocolate 350L
   12  oz  Muntons Medium Crystal 60L
   12  oz  Muntons Dark Crystal 150L
    6  oz  Briess Black Malt 500L  
    6  oz  Torrefied Wheat

1 oz Challenger    8.7% AA @ 60m
1 oz Fuggles       5.7% AA @ 15m
1 oz Challenger    8.7% AA @ 10m
Whirlfloc + yeast nutrient @ 10m
1 oz Fuggles       5.7% AA @  5m

1 pack Safale S-04 Yeast

The Maris Otter, VIctory, and C60 are the oldest malt of the bunch, bought at the same time as all the hops in March 2013.

The Hose

A burst water hose provided the entertainment for the day. When building our setup we used a two-foot section of silicone high-temp hose (the same as we use between our kettles) from the wall-mounted water hookup to the cartridge filter mounted on our brewing bench. Hey, we already had it, so why not?

Unfortunately, standard silicone hose that home-brewers use has a max working pressure of about 10PSI. Most houses have a pressure of 40 – 60 PSI, so clearly this wasn’t going to work for long. A loud BANG followed by the sound of gushing water first scared the crap out of us, then horrified us as we scrambled to shut off the water and mop up the floor. The hose broke into three sections, with the center section burst right down the middle.

Carbon filters remove chlorine well, but only remove chloramine effectively when the flow rate is around 1 gallon per minute or less. We had drilled a 1/16″ hole in a quarter and placed this into the camlock which is hard-plumbed to our water supply, which reduces the flow rate. We thought it would also reduce the pressure in the hose, but apparently it takes a lot of pressure to push water through a carbon cartridge filter, at least more than silicone hose can take.

So we’ll be re-working our water supply to use high-pressure food-grade PVC hose from the wall hookup to the filter, since we don’t really want to clean up all that water again.

The Brew

With the fun all over, we lost a few degrees between the HLT and the mash tun when transferring the strike water, which we’ll have to compensate for in the future. Instead of mashing at 152F, like we intended, the mash stayed around 148F. But like we mentioned before, since the heat exchanger in the HLT was at 152F, some conversion still happens at the right temperature even if the mash is a bit low.

pH settled right on target around 5.3, from the strike water’s original pH of 7.0. Since the recipe uses a fairly high percentage of dark grains, it’s not surprising the mash pH dropped this low.

Continuing a tradition, we batch sparged for a third time. For the first batch we ended up with 5.25 gallons at 13.5 Plato (1.055). We added another 4 gallons of 152F water and recirculated for a few minutes, and then drew off 4.5 gallons at 5.5 Plato (1.022) for the second batch. Combining the entire first batch and 2.25 gallons of the second batch gave us 7.5 gallons of 10.5 Plato (1.042) wort to start the boil.

After the boil, we used our new whirlpool arm to circulate wort from the boil kettle through the pump, to the counterflow chiller, and back to the kettle. We then drained the boil kettle directly into a keg which we oxygenated and then pitched the packet of S-04 without rehydrating. This procedure does increase the risk of infection, since chilled wort is in contact with more surfaces (boil kettle, pump, chiller, hoses) than our usual direct-to-fermenter procedure.

Our whirlpool produced a somewhat slower whirlpool than we were hoping, but it did have the desired effect. All the trub (hop bits, grain bits, hot break, and cold break) concentrates in the middle due to the magic of physics. We then drain clear wort from the side, using a 90 degree side pickup, leaving the junk in the middle.

In the end, we got 5 gallons of 14 Plato (1.060) wort into the fermenter, about what we expected. Thankfully we put the keg into a spare plastic dishpan, since we woke up the next morning to foam and splatter out the airlock, despite using Fermcap S. Didn’t loose much beer, but next time we’ll just put less wort in the keg.

Use-it-up ESB

April 26, 2014British, Recipeadmin

We bought hops and malt in bulk last year, thinking we’d brew more than we have. Well, that’s not true, we thought we’d brew more British beer over the last 12 months. But we didn’t, and now we need to use it up.

What better way to use British malt than brew a British beer?

Name: ESB
Batch size: 5 gallons
Expected OG: 1.055
Expected FG: 1.014
Mash: 90m @ 151F at 1.3 qt/lb

  9 lbs Muntons Maris Otter 3L
  1 lb  Briess Victory 28L
  6 oz  Muntons Medium Crystal 60L
  6 oz  UK Crystal 150L

1 oz Challenger    8.7% AA @ 90m
1 oz Kent Goldings 5.5% AA @ 15m
1 oz Kent Goldings 5.5% AA @  5m
Whirlfloc + yeast nutrient @ 10m

1 pack Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire

The only ingredients that are “fresh” are the yeast and the Crystal 150L. Not that older ingredients will make bad beer, but obviously the fresher the ingredients, the better the beer will be. But don’t get us wrong, we just like beer so we’ll drink it anyway.

The Brew

We mashed at 151F for 90 minutes, and then batch sparged again (mostly to refine our process). The first batch yielded a respectable 5 gallons @ 13P (1.053). Next we added another 5 gallons of 150F water, recirculated for 15 minutes, and drained off 4 gallons @ 5.25P (1.021). We combined the entire first batch and 3 gallons of the second batch in the boil kettle, for a total of 8 gallons @ 10P (1.040). We thought the low gravity required a volume reduction, so after 30 minutes of boil-off, the real boil started with 7.5 gallons @ 11.25P (1.045).

At the end of the 90 minute boil we got a bit less than 5 gallons at a much higher gravity than we expected: 1.068 OG. What happened? It turns out these numbers are completely expected. We simply started with too little wort; instead of boiling off a half-gallon, we should have begun with all 8 gallons of 10P (1.040) wort and boiled down to 5.5 gallons over the 90 minute boil (at a 1.67 g/hr boil-off rate) to achieve the target gravity of 1.055. Oh well.

We also over-boiled our oxygenation stone when cleaning and sanitizing it, which broke the stone away from the MFL fitting that connects the stone to the oxygen hose. So we used the tried-and-true pour method of oxygenation, dumping the cooled wort from the keg into a sanitized bucket, and then back into the keg through a funnel. The funnel provided a bigger pour target and a more concentrated stream into the keg, which produce quite a bit of foam and thus oxygenation. So much so that it foamed out of the keg and onto the floor. Oops.

The Beer

After 18 days of fermentation between 59 degrees (night) and 65 degrees (day) we racked to a secondary keg. Oddly, flocculation was awful. Final gravity ended up at 1.014 for a healthy 7% ABV, which like the OG, was way over what we expected. That’s 78% apparent attenuation, which is quite high for this yeast. Maybe the yeast nutrient we added or good aeration helped the yeast be extra-efficient?

A month after brew day, the beer was clear and drinkable. It lacked some body due to the lower mash temperature (151F) and low percentage (7%) of crystal malt. Next time, we’ll try mashing a bit higher (153F) and if that doesn’t work well enough, we’ll up the crystal to 10% or 12% of the grain bill. The higher alcohol content caused an unwelcome bite versus the IBUs (~50), which created a slightly off-balance final product. Correctly managing the boil gravity will solve that problem next time.

But it looks good, and tastes OK, and we like beer. We’ll drink it!

American Amber Tasting

February 19, 2014Recipe, Reviewsadmin

Earlier this year we brewed a Bock as our first attempt at a lager. If you don’t remember, we split the batch and pitched half with US-05 to create an American Amber ale. Today we’re going to taste that.

Appearance: this brew was actually kegged and carbonated in late January, so it’s long-since crystal clear. Color is a spot-on reddish-amber. Pours with a nice foamy head, not too dense, which gradually falls back. Some lacing is present, but not as much as our Rye IPA.

Smell: all spice, no fruit, but not overpowering. This is expected due to the use of “noble” Saaz and Hallertau hops which tend to have a spicy character. Since this batch was not drop-hopped, no aroma explodes out of the glass like you’d get with an American IPA.

Taste: good taste, great bitterness for the style, and very easy drinking. Spicy notes from the hops, no overpowering caramel flavors or cloying sweetness from the extra crystal we tossed in. We think it’s well-balanced towards the bitter side.

Mouthfeel: there’s room for improvement here. The brew finished at 1.024 SG, likely due to the higher mash temperature. Next time, we’d keep the mash temps around 150 – 151F for less body.

Temperature Zones

A HERMS system (like we have) has multiple temperature zones. First you’ve got the mash tun itself, and second you have the Heat EXchanger (HEX) in your Hot Liquor Tank. They are not always the same temperature, and that means that both zones can affect the fermentability and mouthfeel of your beer.

If you’ll recall, mashing at a lower temperature (like 148F) increases fermentability because it favors the beta-amylase enzyme, which breaks starches into simpler sugars that yeast convert to alcohol. Higher mash temperatures (like 154F) favor alpha-amylase, which breaks starches into larger chunks that yeast cannot process as easily. Thus, higher mash temperature yields a less fermentable wort, and more unfermentable sugars, which create a fuller-tasting beer.

So, if your mash tun is at 149F and your HEX coil is at 154F, you’ll be getting starch conversion in both places, but quite possibly favoring different enzymes. You need to keep the temperature between the mash and the HEX as close as possible to ensure the mash profile is consistent. This is how we got more mouthfeel and less ABV on this brew without intending to.

For the future brews, we’ll try to hit mash temps more precisely, and reduce flow rates through the HEX to ensure that the wort in the coils isn’t a higher temperature than the mash itself.

Rye IPA Tasting

January 12, 2014Recipe, Reviewsadmin

Forever ago (well, mid December), we brewed a Rye IPA with 61% pale malt, 18% rye malt, 14% Crystal 60L, and 7% Thomas Fawcett Amber, with CTZ for bittering and Citra for the finish. It was supposed to be a double IPA, but ended up with 7% ABV, so not quite. But it’s maturing well.

Appearance: since it’s still recently dry-hopped, there’s still a few bits of pellet hops floating around, and there’s a haze from the rye. In our experience, Biofine Clear (which we always add to secondary) takes a while to do it’s thing, especially at the 45F that our kegerator is set to. Color is dark gold, almost amber but without any red; still within the bounds of IPA. The head falls back slowly, has great lacing, and sticks to the glass.

Smell: not as much hop aroma as expected; the malt dominates. The Thomas Fawcett Amber causes the rye to recede to the background enough that it’s hard to pick out, and this was supposed to be a rye-forward beer. The dry-hopping with Citra and Cascade didn’t do as much for the aroma as we thought it would, but you can still detect fruity notes that pair well enough with the Amber malt.

Taste: can we say Thomas Fawcett Amber? We had some to use up, but it’s very easy to pick out, and next time we’ll use less of it. In any case, the taste is pleasantly bitter, and the dry-hops contributed more flavor than we thought they would: 1/2oz Citra for 7 days, and 1oz Cascade for 2 days.

Mouthfeel: very smooth and heavier on the body, though it finished at 1.016 SG. It’s not as carbonated as we’d like, but that’s OK.

Next time: we’d use less Fawcett Amber malt since its character dominates and this was supposed to be a rye beer. We’d also up the bittering hop additions and reduce the Crystal 60, as the beer was a bit too sweet for our tastes before adding the dry-hops. Even so, this is still a good beer, just not what we were expecting. We’ll still have a great time drinking 10 gallons of it.

Spring Time is Lager Time

January 5, 2014Lager, Recipeadmin

We’ve never brewed a lager here at BIR because we didn’t have a proper fermentation and lagering chamber. But now we have chest freezer and an Auber Instruments dual-stage temperature controller, and we can lager with the best of them (hah!).

Mini Review: Lager and Ale

You probably know this already, so feel free to skip ahead if you’re bored. Beer is often divided into two large groups: lager and ale. While they each developed distinctive styles over time, only one thing really separates them: yeast.

Ale yeast likes to be warm (mid 60s) but if too warm, it produces bad flavors, and if too cold, it just goes to sleep. It’s also referred to as “top-fermenting” since it stays quite active, produces a lot of krausen, and tends to be caught in the foam. Ale yeast produces more esters and these often contribute much of the flavor associated with classic ale styles. Total time from “grain to glass” can be as little as two weeks.

Lager, on the other hand, likes to be quite cool (upper 40s to lower 50s) while fermenting and works much more slowly. After primary fermentation is done, the beer may only be 40% to 60% fermented, and usually contains by-products of the fermentation process that smell like rotten eggs (sulphur) or butterscotch (diacetyl) or green apple (acetaldehyde). This requires a long, cold lagering (from German, “to store”) period during which the yeast clean up all these by-products, and all the haze-causing proteins clump together, drop out, and produce soft-flavored crystal-clear beer. Unlike ales, a lager takes at least 8 to 12 weeks to be ready, often longer.

Dear God, 2 Months?!!

Yeah, that’s right. I hope it’s worth it. But we had 7 pounds of Briess Light Munich and some Saaz to use up, and brewing a Bock beer was the best way to do it. But even more importantly, we have to perfect our lager process in preparation for our Holy Grail: National Bohemian Beer. We don’t want to screw that up, so this brew is a test run. One of us started the drinking life in Baltimore and hooked the rest of us on Natty Boh, and 2014 is the year we’re gonna clone it. Say hello to a summer keg party.

The Recipe

We started out with a 5 gallon recipe just to use up the Light Munich, Saaz, and Victory. But why brew 5 gallons when 10 is just as easy?

Name: Bock
Batch size: 10 gallons
Expected OG: 1.072
Expected FG: 1.016
Mash: 75m @ 151F at 1.5 qt/lb

 14 lbs Briess Bonlander Munich (2-row)
  7 lbs Briess Light Munich 10L (6-row)
3.5 lbs Briess Victory 28L
  2 lbs Muntons Light Crystal 60L
  1 lb  Briess Caramel 20L
3 oz Saaz 2.9% AA @ 90m
1 oz German Hallertau 4.1% AA @ 90M
1 oz Saaz 2.9% AA @ 10m
Whirlfloc @ 10m

5 gallons: 2 packs Wyeast 2206 Bavarian Lager
5 gallons: 1 pack rehydrated US-05

Side note: all Continental Munich malt (ie, European) is made from 2-row barley. Standard US Munich is made from 6-row barley, so to create the most authentic Bock try to find some 2-row, either European or domestic. It happens that Briess Bonlander Munich is just the malt we’re looking for…

The Brew

The Caramel 20 and one pound of the Light Crystal weren’t in the original recipe, but once the overpowering smell of biscuits hit us we panicked and dumped them into the mash. All the base malts (Victory, Bonlander Munich, and Light Munich) have quite a bit of biscuit or cracker flavor and smell, and some of that carries into the finished beer. We really, really hope this isn’t a Biscuit Bomb.

This time we took gravity readings during the mash with the hydrometer, which proved inconclusive. The first reading about 10 minutes after the mash started was around 15 Plato, then up to 16 Plato, then back to 15. You’d think that as the mash progressed and the water leached more sugars out of the grain, that the gravity would increase, but we didn’t find that to be the case this time. An experiment for later?

Overall the brew went smoothly, except for one thing: where do you put the grains when it’s below zero outside? We’ve got a compost heap, but it was rock-solid. Thankfully, draining all the left-over hot water from the mash tun and dumping it onto the compost thawed it enough to dig a hole into which all the grain fit. That still meant a couple trips outside in negative degree weather, which sucked.

We ended up with two kegs full of 1.066 gravity wort. Both got some Fermcap S. One got aerated with pure O2 for about 30 seconds, and then was pitched with a packet of rehydrated US-05. We’re hoping it’ll turn into a nice American Amber ale, which we can compare to the Bock. But given the time a lager takes, we might just drink it before that.

For the second keg, we aerated for one minute with pure O2 since we’ve read that lager yeast wants more oxygen than ale yeast does. Then we pitched two smack-packs of Wyeast 2206 Bavarian Lager and tossed it into the chest freezer set to 50 degrees. We’ll keep it here for three weeks before transferring to secondary for the two-month lagering period at 40 degrees, and hopefully it’ll be ready around late March, just in time for Bock season.

Treat Your Aeration Stone Well

Imagine our surprise when we came down to the brewery the other day and found our aeration stone covered in mold. Yikes! During aeration the stone is immersed in wort and apparently rinsing it off is not an adequate cleaning strategy. Lesson learned; before the brew we scrubbed it off, boiled it for 10 minutes, soaked it in PBW for a couple hours, and then StarSan. After the brew we boiled it again, and we’re storing it in an open plastic bag instead of a closed one, to allow it to completely dry out between brews.

Bonus Bitter Update

December 3, 2013British, Recipeadmin

A few weeks ago we brewed a Jubelale 2009 clone which we partigyled into a Bonus Bitter. The beer started at 1.036, finished at 1.008 for 3.6% ABV, and is indeed a nice, light, easy-drinking bitter. But there was a flavor problem: good bitterness at the front and maltiness at the back, but a huge black hole of nothing in the middle. It’s hard to describe; the initial bitterness changes to a slightly tannic taste without any body at all (like a glass of bitter water) before the final malt appears. What can plug that hole?

Brown sugar just happens to have the right flavor profile to complement the tannic note and add some body to the hole in the middle. The molasses notes are just a bonus, but still to style as British brewers often use various brown sugars, caramels, or molasses for color and flavor. The only question was how much to add…

A solution of 3 parts boiling water to 1 part sugar was made, whisking the sugar until completely dissolved. Three 6oz glasses of the beer were poured. The first was the control with no sugar added. The second received one teaspoon of sugar solution, and the third glass two teaspoons. Results indicated that one teaspoon was the best amount; it was a noticeable improvement over no sugar at all, while two teaspoons was too sweet. Calculating from one teaspoon per 6 ounces to the 4 gallon batch gave about 1.75 cups for the whole keg.

Problem solved.

Winter Series: Deschutes Jubelale 2009

November 20, 2013Hops, Recipeadmin

It’s getting down to the wire to brew Winter beers that need anything more than a week or two of aging. What to brew? Jubelale! Brew It Right™ hasn’t brewed often with dark crystal, so the use of Crystal 80 and Crystal 160 in this recipe intrigues us. But first, a diversion…

Amps are Everything

And here we ain’t got that many. The house service is 100 amps and the main electrical panel is almost that many years old. Just kidding. But it’s so bad that you can’t run any 30+ amp continuous load (brewing, clothes dryer, air conditioner) without the main 100A breaker getting really hot and eventually tripping, causing a major brewing bummer. So we use this:

how to cool your main breaker down — Ghetto Amp Booster!

Replacement breakers on eBay are obviously used and quite possibly just as bad as the one existing one. Once the HLT or boil kettle is at temperature everything is fine, but it’s the 40 minute continuous load ramp-up that makes the panel contemplate self-immolation. We’re going to upgrade to 200A service this winter, but we’ll have to reach deep into some paychecks for it.

The Recipe

Expected OG: 1.069
Expected FG: 1.016
Mash: 60m @ 152F at 1.3 qt/lb

10.65 lbs Rahr Pale 2-Row
1.42 lbs UK Extra Dark Crystal 160L
1.00 lb Thomas Fawcett Amber
0.71 lbs Briess Caramel 80L
0.16 lbs Briess Carapils
0.08 oz Roasted Barley 300L

0.6 oz Galena 13.9% AA @ 60m
0.5 oz Cascade 6.8% AA @ 60m
0.5 oz Willamette 5.3% AA @ 60m
1.0 oz UK Fuggles 5.7% AA @ 30m
0.7 oz UK Goldings 5.0% AA @ 0m
1.0 oz UK Goldings 5.0% AA dry hop
0.5 oz Cascade 6.8% AA dry hop
Whirlfloc @ 10m

White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale

The Thomas Fawcett Amber was lying around, and we really had to use it up. We also substituted Fuggles for Tettnanger because we had them lying around, and we really had to use them up.

The Brew

Dough-in landed the mash at 150F instead of the 152F we were hoping for. Since there are a couple variables involved in maintaining mash temperatures (thermal mass of the water and grain, pump speed, ambient temperature, etc), each brew works out a bit differently until you get to know your system well. How long that takes depends on how often you brew.

The Brew It Right system has two active temperature probes during the mash: one in the HLT and a second on the HERMS coil exit. The center of the mash usually reads about 2 degrees cooler than the HERMS coil exit, which usually reads about 2 degrees lower than the HLT. Yes, you can speed up your pumps to bring the mash closer to HLT temperature, but that also means the wort doesn’t spend as much time in the HERMS coil and doesn’t pick up as much heat from the HLT. So you need to reach a happy equilibrium, figure out a standard pump speed and HLT/MLT temperature differentials, write them down, and keep using them.

After adjusting temperatures and reaching the right mash temperature of 152F, sparge first runnings were about 14 Plato (1.056) and didn’t drop, resulting in 7.3 gallons at 14 Plato. Since the last runnings were obviously nowhere near 1.010 (which starts extracting tannins from the grain husks) why waste a ton of great wort? Partigyle it! After filling the boil kettle, the left-over Jubelale mash got topped off with two pounds of Maris Otter and a half pound of wheat malt, was left to sit for about an hour around 148F, and then drained off into a bucket for the second beer.

It was boiled. Hops were added. Whirlfloc not forgotten. Chilled and kegged to 75F, yeast dumped, dropped into the fermentation chamber. The final gravity was 1.068, just shy of where it should be. Adding a bit more wort and boiling longer before starting the hop clock would have bumped the gravity up to the recipe’s 1.069, but that takes time and there wasn’t enough of it with another brew on deck. All in all, a pretty successful night.

Bonus Bitter

It’s a crime to waste good wort. We had 7 gallons of 1.027 wort just sitting in a bucket from the Jubelale mash and extra grain. Time to brew number two… Since it’s also a crime to waste good hops, the left-over Jubelale hops formed the backbone of this beer: 0.4 oz Galena at 60 minutes followed by 0.5 oz Willamette at 15 minutes for around 30 IBU. After Whirlfloc and yeast nutrient at 10 minutes, we kegged about 4.5 gallons at 1.038 gravity and pitched a pack of Nottingham yeast straight into the wort. Ideally it ferments down to 1.010 or lower for a light, dry bitter around 3.5% ABV. It added a total of 1.5 hours to the brew day; not bad for another 5 gallons of beer.

Vent Times Two?

In a previous post we installed a second vent fan; how well did it work for this brew? Not as well as we hoped, but much better than we feared. The vent still doesn’t trap all the steam from the boil kettle during a particularly vigorous boil, but the amount of condensation on the top and sides of the vent is hugely reduced. Next time we’ll try repositioning the pots with the boil kettle in the middle, centered between both fans.

If you hadn’t guessed, your brewery is a never-ending project demanding continuous improvement. That’s how you Brew It Right.

IPA Time

November 8, 2013Recipeadmin

Hard to believe, but Brew It Right™ hasn’t brewed an IPA since early July. So we decided to dig into this one by researching the ingredients and statistics of a number of IPAs we enjoy and respect, and construct rough parameters and ingredient options based on them. Then we created a unique recipe within this framework and brewed it. We will continue refining this recipe until we Brew It Right™.

Within the Parameters

Using ingredients and characteristics of the research beers (Fulton Sweet Child of Vine, Summit Unchained #6, Summit Silver Anniversary Ale, Summit Saga IPA, Surly Furious, Hopworks Organic IPA, and Bell’s Two-Hearted), we wanted to brew an IPA within the following ranges:

IBU: 60 - 70
SRM: 5 - 20
ABV: 6.1% - 6.5%
OG: 1.057 - 1.065
FG: 1.010 - 1.015
Hops: Centennial, Amarillo, Simcoe, Citra
Malt: 2-Row (US and British), Golden Promise, Crystal, Munich

Some of the beers feature less-used hops (Rakau, Palisade, Glacier, Boadicea, Pilgrim), but we’re sticking with American hops. We’ll branch out to include some Golden Promise for a bit more sweetness and depth. Since we’re not a huge fan of crystal-bombs, the C60 is only 4% of the grain bill, and there’s a bit of roast barley thrown in for color because nobody had Black Patent lying around. Target OG is 15.4 Plato (1.063).

The Brew

The mash got off to a great start, hitting mash temp exactly at 151F. After about 75 minutes of mashing, sparge first runnings resulting were 14.75 Plato (1.060), and the first four gallons at 14 Plato (1.057). Unfortunately, the sparge went long, ending up with about 8 gallons at 10.5 Plato (1.044), and the required boil gravity got mis-calculated, requiring a long boil-off. An hour later the actual boil started with 6.5 gallons of what was later discovered to be 12.4 Plato (1.050) wort.

Upon realizing that the 45 minute hop addition had been forgotten, it was added along with the 30 minute hops instead. But not to fear, 45 minute hop additions don’t really contribute that much flavor over 60 or 30 additions. Next time this is brewed, we’ll skip the 45 minute and bump up the 60 and the 30 minute additions to compensate.

The boil resulted in 4.75 gallons of 18 Plato wort (1.074) chilled and kegged, with rehydrated US-05 yeast pitched and fermentation set at 67°F in the fermentation chamber.

Racking to Secondary

Wow, what an awful taste. First off, too sweet, and the aroma hops (mostly Cluster) just don’t work with the sweetness of the malt. Maybe it will get better with time, but we certainly know what we won’t do in the future: pair a large amount of Golden Promise with late-addition Cluster.

British Series: Fuller’s London Porter

October 8, 2013British, Recipeadmin

Double IPA blah blah Belgian blah blah. Nobody seems to care much about Porters these days, but they have a long and storied history starting in the working-class neighborhoods of London. And Autumn is a perfect time to brew one.

I was intrigued by the use of brown malt in Fuller’s London Porter, as it used to be the only malt you could get (until the Industrial Revolution foisted “smokeless” fuels upon the world) and thus adds historic character to the recipe. Since I can’t recall any craft beer I’ve tasted that uses it, I’ll have to fall on that sword and try it out.

But there’s a problem. Wheeler has one recipe, while Brew Your Own has a different one, and the Interwebs have many others. Which one is right? Wheeler’s recipe (converted from 19L) clocked in at 19 SRM and low on alcohol, but it does use a 90 minute boil like most British recipes. BYO, on the other hand, used a 60 minute boil, but all of the stats checked out, and the recipe was reviewed by Fuller’s themselves. Thus BYO it was.

For yeast, sources recommend Wyeast 1968 London ESB or White Labs WLP002, both of which are reputed to be Fuller’s yeast. This strain doesn’t have very high alchohol tolerance, and doesn’t attenuate very well, leading calculators to indicate my FG would be high around 1.018 or 1.019. I’m hoping it decides to outperform.

The Recipe

Expected OG: 1.054
Expected FG: 1.014
Mash: 90m @ 153F at 1.3 qt/lb

8.3 lbs Muntons Maris Otter
1.0 lb Muntons Light Crystal 60L
1.5 lbs UK Brown Malt
0.75 lbs American Chocolate

1.25 oz Fuggles @ 60m
0.75 oz Fuggles @ 10m
Whirlfloc @ 10m

Wyeast 1968 London ESB

The Brew

Due to bad planning I didn’t have enough Chocolate malt, so I had to substitute 4 oz of roast barley. I also added 1oz black malt for a slightly darker color as the BYO recipe also didn’t come out quite as dark as I wanted. Neither of these changes will have much effect on the flavor, thankfully.

Damn that hopper is big... — Only 11 lbs of grain. Damn that hopper is big…

Mash-in is somewhat complicated because I try to keep the HERMS coil underwater in the HLT to ensure mash temperature is as stable as possible. So after reaching strike temps in the HLT, I run the strike water to the MLT and set up recirculation through the HERMS coil to ensure the strike water remains at strike temperature. Once that’s done, I shut off the mash pump, dough in, and let the mash rest while I refill the HLT with cold water until it has dropped to mash temp, which takes a few minutes. Then I start up the mash pump again and off we go.

Starting at 164F and adding the grain set the mash temp right on target: 153F. The large proportion of dark grains dropped the mash pH to 5.4, which I adjusted down to 5.3-ish using lactic acid. Most brews with lighter grain bills start around pH 5.8 with my city water, so this was a pleasant surprise.

First runnings were 1.052, and the sparge ran long at almost 1 1/2 hours to collect about 7 gallons with a boil gravity of 1.044. That gravity seemed a little low for a 60 minute boil, so I ended up doing a 90 minute boil to reduce volume and bump up the gravity. I stuck with the hop schedule though, adding the hops with 60 and 10 minutes left in the boil. Ending gravity was 1.062 into the fermenter.

Which means some number is wrong. I’m very confident that the 1.062 is right, meaning that the boil gravity reading is somehow incorrect. There are two possibilities here. First, perhaps I didn’t stir the boil kettle enough before drawing off a sample; wort does stratify in the boil kettle since the first runnings are higher gravity than later ones. Second, since hydrometers don’t work well over 80F I have to cool wort samples down, and I do that in a bucket of water. I may have let some of that water get into the sample, diluting the gravity. Solving this second problem requires buying a refractometer, which uses small samples that cool very quickly. Solving the first problem requires not being lazy.

Regardless, the airlock is happily bubbling away at 66F, and in two weeks we’ll know how awesome it tastes. Cheers!