Brewz aplenty!

Right!
Been a long time since I updated this blog so here goes a quickie.

I've a couple of brews awaiting sampling in the cellar. January was NoSugarNoBooze month for yours truly, and with that out of the way, the time to take some samples is, well, now.

Or thereabouts.

Expect some notes on this year's misstimed Kagami Biraki brew, which is a different version of that Lawnmower Amarillo Inferno I brewed last year. Think low-ABV hefeweizen with a shitload of hops. When I tried one on the day of the dojo's New Year's celebration, it was resiny like a freshly chopped pine log, and utterly undrinkable, but I've high hopes for this one.

Like so, with a hint of something beery.

That Christmas pineapple barley wine I reckoned wouldn't be ready before the last withered Christmas decorations have dropped from doorposts by themselves? I'm really curious how well that's been behaving down in the cellar. More news sometime this week, I think.

And 2014 will bring lots of brewing activity. I've about 4 different brews scheduled for the next few months, including a wicked imperial stout with some wood'n'booze, and some improved, pimped-out-chromed-out versions of prior attempts at brewing. Oooh yeah I'm in the mood for some brews.

Stocked up on brewing supplies.

But that's not all! Last year, I acquired (read stole) some wild hops from a neighbouring garden by digging up a piece of rhizome and planting it in our own front yard. While the plant did take, and actually grew about 10 feet or so, no cones were produced. And look what the exceptionally mellow January weather is doing to it now:

Two fresh new sprouts!

Which reminded me of something I still had lying around on my shelf: a gift from the guys at Meantime in the form of Hops in a Box!
About time I got those prepped for their first year in Continental soil.

But first: a good long soak.

So yay! Feeling pretty stoked about all this brewing activity. Expect more regular updates in the future. I promise! (sort of).

Until then,

Greetz

Jo

Brewday!

HoppySlosh brews again!

What with spring being somewhat delayed, I had ample time to contemplate my next brewing endeavour. Looking foward to mowing the lawn and doing other potentially dehydrating chores around the house during the summer, I'm brewing a light, hoppy wheat beer this time; an American style hefe-weizen (or a Germanic Murkan wheat, if you will).

First things first: I need to learn how to control my brewing volumes so I'm applying science in the most advanced way possible to gauge the volumes in my kettle:

The Graded Spoon

Yes, that's a (rather oversized) plastic spoon, graded by yours truly to indicate how much liquid is in my kettle. Sometimes, all you need to improve the quality of life is a permanent marker. And an oversized spoon.

Onward onward as the day wanes: mashing was a breeze. I was prepared for all kinds of disaster (*) after reading that wheat tends to clog up the filter bed, but my grain behaved perfectly, and I got a good 22 liters of turbid wort out of the tun.

Steep steep.

*) speaking of disaster, the most important rule in brewing can be neatly summed up as this: Always check your valves. Nothing spoils the mood quite like having to start mopping when you're not even 5 minutes into the mash.

I applied a new technique (well, new for me at least) called first wort hopping.

Not hard to guess what that means.

I've been told the early addition will smoothe out the bitterness from the early hops, so here goes nothing.

Sparging. Note the state of alertness of the nearby mop.



Sparging went well, although I did forget to properly mash out (again). Forgot to take a pic of the pre-boil wort, but one thing I like about wheat is that it naturally clouds the wort, which means I could stop worrying about a super-clean sparge for a change.
No pic of the boil either, so you'll need to take my word for it: I added liberal doses of Centennial, Amarillo and Citra.

Post-boil tampering with the counterflow cooler.

My fifth attempt at brewing and I finally figured out how to properly cool: let gravity do the work. As you can see in the pic, I pour my boiled (and still piping hot) wort in my mash tun again, which will now serve as a filter tun. What's not in the pic is how this time I placed the tun on a stool on top of the counter, raising it high enough to no longer be a pain during cooling. Higher altitude means more hydraulic pressure chasing my wort through the cooler, and less chance of flowback or halted cooling. 

Should have thought of that four sessions ago, but at least I'm improving.

After cooling, only one thing was missing. Well, two really.

Some yeast, and a lovely assistant to pitch it.

I'm using a bit of a character yeast this time: the German Hefe Weizen from White Labs (WLP300 in case you're interested) will impart spicy notes to the beer, which I hope will complement the hoppy aromas.

Fitted the airlock, forestalled any domestic disputes by cleaning up the kitchen, and a good six hours later, the yeast was going glugluglug like clockwork. Next morning, a good 5 inch of thick yeasty froth confirmed all was well with Brew#5. I'll give it about a week in primary (depending on airlock activity and density measurements), after which I'll rack it to secondary, with a generously added amout of Citra hops. From the whiffs I got off the airlock so far, this may prove to be quite drinkable. 

More news as the brew progresses!

Until then,

Greetz

Jo

You're starving. Now go on a diet.

All right, you can all stop worrying now, the Yeast family are fine.


After transferring my captivated yeast colony to a larger container, it looked like all activity had ceased. Turns out they were starving: the SG(*) had dropped to about 1014, which is way below the comfort zone of my budding buddies.

(*) The specific gravity of a liquid describes how much more dense than water it is. In the case of wort, it is indicative of how much sugar is still available for the yeast to munch, and hence to grow, on.

So I topped up the broth with some extra wort, cleverly calculated to be of a sufficient SG to come up with a total of 1040 again, which should be enough (*) to get the yeast going again.

(*) But not too much. Yeast can pretty picky and delicate, especially at the cultivating stage. It wouldn't do to overcompensate by dousing my recuperating colony with wort of, say, SG 1080. Just like you don't save a starving child by forcefeeding it a double Whopper with extra cheese.

So, feed the hungry so the thirst shall have drink. Eventually. The Yeasts were happy with theirextra bento boxes, and after a few hours, a nice white head had reformed on top of the wort (no pic, you'll have to take my word for it).

With still about 4 days to go till brewing day, I heeded the advice of the learned and stopped feeding the yeast for a while. Fitted the bottle with an airlock and allowed them to come to rest for a bit.

Airlock. No seriously.

Three benefits from this resting period:

1. I won't have to keep feeding the yeast for 4 more days. It's a bit of a hassle, what with the risk of infection imposing a serious level of sanity from my part.
2. Extending from this, I will have a manageable volume of yeast starter by the time I need to pitch it, instead of 5 liters of the stuff
3. the yeast, which now somewhere its 100th generation since I started cultivating it, can have its first fling with anaerobic respiration and (yay) alcohol

Tomorrow evening, D-day-minus-one, I'll feed it again so it'll be all ready and gung-ho by the time I get to pitch it on D-day.

Till next time!

Greetz

Jo

The leaking bucket

Hah! Barely up and a new message already. Who said anything about procrastination?
Oh. Wait.
That was me.

Getting ready to brew, with nearly all my stuff(*) in place. Most of said "stuff" can be purchased online these days; the days when home brewing was strictly limited to the well-connected are over. Well, no, you still need a connection but...whatever. Stuff.

 (*) "stuff" is an ancient brewing term for "materials and ingredients".

Since I wanted to at least do some tinkering of my own, I decided to cobble up my own filter tun.

For the layman and -woman, here's  quick-and-dirty run-down of the brewing process (to illustrate my level of savvy-ness as well as the importance of the filter tun -see step 4)

1. acquire stuff (important!)
2. mill malt (more on malt later, look here if you can't be bothered to wait.)
3. steep milled malt in "hot" water to breakdown starch into sugar
4. filter the infusion (called wort), discarding the leftover solids. 
5. boil the wort, together with hops
6. cool
7. add yeast, which will eat the sugar and convert it into alcohol and bubbles
8. lager
9. bottle
10. drink (the main reason we're going through all this trouble in the first place)

Sounds easy, but like I said: this is the condensed version. Condensing beer is a bad idea, so more on these steps later.

The filtering tun then. Being the simplest of filters, and the easiest to assemble yourself (myself, I should say, mustn't generalise my ineptness at DIY projects), it consists of two buckets, one inserted into the other. The inner bucket has holes in the bottom, allowing the wort to seem through the collecting solids into the outer bucket. The wort is drained via a conveniently installed tap.

So I purchased two 30l buckets (metrics only here, sorry 'bout that), one with a tap already installed. The other is just a plain bucket:

With the right tools in hand, I drew a grid on the bottom, with the intersections being the targets for my trusty hand drill.

I used a 2mm drill bit, which of course won't fit in the drill itself. After some swearing from my part, and some pitiful whining and moping, I fitted the drill bit with a wad of paper, which seemed adequate. Another reason why I didn't use a stainless steel bucket (hah! on purpose, I tells ya!).
After getting rid of the whiteboard marker lines and the swirly bits of drilled-out plastic, I ended up with...

...this! A 161-mesh, home made filter bed!

Insert into the outer bucket and you get something like this:

Some clever calculations reveal that about 5l of "foot space" exists between the two buckets. I'll probably need to fill that with hot water during the mashing (that's step 3 in the condensed outline above).

Whoohoo exciting! Next stop: the wort cooler. Some minor DIY required there, combined with clever trading skills I levelled up during the time I spent playing online RPGs.

Until next time!


Greetz

Jo