Beer Drinker Beware!

7 May 2011 was National Home brewers Day!  Most home brewers had set aside ingredients to brew a batch of beer that day in celebration, I was no exception.  However, that is not how that day ended up.  As a matter of fact, my beautiful wife made sure I was able to brew that day and instead of brewing, she allowed me to purchase what she is calling an early birthday/Father's Day present.  Exactly, she let me get a Father's Day present the day before Mother's Day!!  I only hope I was able to show her how much I appreciated it with her Mother's Day gift.  As you can see below, she let me get a kegerator.  Not just a kegerator but the guy was also including the 2/3rds full keg with it.  Coors Light, but it's essentially free beer.  Now I'll be able to keep my kegged home brew cold before drinking, and finally get to lager some beers, I'm so excited.  I have some other plans for the kegerator as well, going to make an original Muddy Water Brewing Company tap pull cannibalizing one of the taps you can see on top in the picture.  I've also had my two beautiful daughters help me decorate the front of the kegerator as you can see in the second picture.  All I need so far is a coupling for the tube from the faucet and the tube for my out-put keg connection and I'm all set.

So I didn't brew on National Home brew Day but the following weekend I did.  I even had some help from my oldest daughter Rose.  Early (0550) I started getting things ready for brew day, and had a little trouble with the new grain mill.  I would show you the video I was trying to take while doing it but you really can't see anything.  That's because as I was flailing around trying not to spill ALL the grains on the ground when the torque of the drill flipped the grain mill.  Needless to say I wasn't successful.  My malt went everywhere.  So like any home brewer who doesn't really have the money to just run out and buy more malt on the spot, I swept up what I could and used it anyway.  Thus Muddy Water Porter was born.  Anyone who drinks this one when its done, be warned, you may actually be drinking mud. 

 

 My good buddy and assistant brewer Nate Kehn warned me it was bad juju to name a beer before the brewing process began, a rule we set when we really started to get into brewing. The last time you remember I named a beer before the brewing process, I brought about a week and a half long cold spell, with freezing rain and ice, that was my Wet Willy's from the post, My Apologies to the Alaska my apologies to the beer. Didn't follow the warning so this time the brewing gods made sure my beer was muddy from the dirt of the garage and by the weather again. See below

 

Keg Beer at Home!

After all that I went through brewing BST Amber Ale, you think I would have made it easy on myself by remembering to get some Corn Sugar for the bottling/priming.  Not so.  My Wife suggested we go to Tallahassee, Florida and visit the Home Brew Den, a home brew store I've checked out online before, and is the closest home brew store to where we are now.  Of course its 2 hours away.  The morning of our trip, we were searching the site for items of interest and discovered we had the funds to get something I had been wanting for a while, a 5 gallon "Corny" keg with a 5 pound CO2 tank and all the regulators and tubes.

Now I learned the process of kegging my beer from a video on YouTube, I'm sure you could do the same.  As always the most important thing when brewing or bottling or kegging beer is cleaning and sanitizing your equipment.

I picked up some San Star from the brew store and added it to the keg to sanitize it.  It foamed up pretty good as you can see, and I made sure to dangle the cap in the sanitation as well.

The next step was to start to transfer the beer from my fermenter to my keg.

This time around I decided to utilize a secondary fermenter.  I've read and heard that a wort chiller and transferring your beer to a secondary fermenter will drastically improve beer clarity, and it does.

Once the beer is in your keg, you seal it up and prepare to carbonate it.  I decided to use the quick "force carbonation" method.  I apologize for not having more pictures of this part, I was too excited about doing it and forgot to take pictures.

First I set the regulator to 30 PSI and opened the valve to allow the CO2 to enter the tank.  For the next 4-5 minutes I vigorously rolled the keg on the floor back and forth ensuring to keep the gas hose and inlet closest to the floor.  After that some say to turn off the gas and remove the gas tube and age the beer for one day.  Others say you can blow off the excess pressure and pour a beer. I'm fairly impatient, so I released the excess gas and poured my first glass of BST Amber Ale.  I was not disappointed.

I leave you with a picture of my new keg system.......

Until next time.........

My apologies to Alaska, my apologies to the beer......

In my attempts to make good tasting beer and get away from the "Kick you in the crotch, knock you on your rear" high alcohol content beers, I haven't been able to make a beer that is the average 5% abv.  So for that I'm sorry to the beer.  As for my apologies to Alaska, I have a rule about my beer naming process.  I will not name a beer until I am in the brewing process because I feel each beer has its own personality and it allows for me to capture that essence with the name.  However, I really wanted to name my latest beer, a Scottish Ale style beer, Wet Willy's.  The beer did not disappoint.

I'm sort of a pyro so I like to play with fire from time to time, as you can see above.  My playing with fire though may have kicked the weather into a tizzy and thereby allowed for me to officially name my beer Wet Willy's.  You see, the weather warmed up just enough that the fair amount of precipitation that was about to fall probably changed from snow to RAIN.  For the next 8-10 hours it rained which turned Alaska, at least the Anchorage/Elmendorf AFB area, into a skating rink of slush and ice.  So, Alaska, I'm sorry, but not completely because I was able to name my Scottish Ale, Wet Willy's.  Now onto it.......

I'm always trying to make each and every recipe I make my own, as a matter of fact this recipe didn't take shape until I was actually standing in the grain room of my local home brew store, Arctic Brewing Supply Co here in Anchorage, AK.  I was talking to my wife about what kind of recipe to use and even had her search on the Internet on my phone for one.  I finally, using another recipe as a guide, came up with a make-shift Scottish Ale recipe.  7.25 pounds of CaraMunich, .5 pounds of Crystal 120, and of course .25 pounds of Roasted Barley for body and color.  I also went with some hops I have never used before but I must say I'm impressed with, Northern Brewer, I used one ounce each for bittering and aroma for 2 total ounces.

I've been having issues with trying to figure out just the correct amount of water to use for my all grain adventures, but programs such as Beer Smith and my iPhone app Sparge Pal are a great help.  This was my first Beer Smith beer, I'm using the trial edition now but I will be getting the full version soon.  If you haven't seen it or used it, even after only one beer I'm saying get it and use it.  Following the amounts given, I started the beer, and like last time, covered the cooler with a blanket to help keep the temperature where it needed to be.

Nighty night beer......

Once you get the first run off after the grains have sat long enough in the water, you want to pour that back over the grain bed to filter off as much of the grain husks and bits that made it through your SS braided tube in the bottom of the cooler.  Doing this over and over again until the sweet wort runs clear is the process, but its difficult to pour the wort back over the grain bed without disturbing the grains without creating "tunnels" to the bottom or breaking up the grain bed altogether.  Last time I didn't do that cause I didn't have anything that would help with pouring the wort back over the grains.  This time, in my quest to do things as easy as I possibly could, I made a contraption that would help me.

I took an old plastic Folgers coffee container, that has a handle built in on the side, and drilled holes in the lid as you can see with the smallest drill bit I had.  The only drawbacks to this rig, is there is no insulation between the handle and yourself so I would suggest wearing a glove to use this rig, and it doesn't have a vent hole for air to come in.  I solved the later by poking a hole in the bottom of the coffee container, which of course means while its filling you need to have that hole plugged, again a glove will come in handy at this point.  Here is the rig in action, you can see it doesn't disturb the grain bed and gets the job done.

Its a very slow process, I think this actually took about an hour in itself, for both the runoff and the remaining hot water to complete your wort volume for your boil.  Then of course its onto the boil, like I said earlier, I'm sort of a pyro....

You can see the dark color of the beer in the brew kettle on the left here, running clear as far as grain bits in the wort but a nice dark color.  I had some issues getting the temperature up to a boil when I started with it on the fire because of the cold, wet weather.  It eventually started boiling and I got the process moving.  Unfortunately my iPhone died on me about 10 minutes from the end of the boil, so I have no pictures for the rest of the night, but the last few processes of chilling and adding the wort to the carboy, pitching the yeast, and then of course cleaning up, when just as you would think.  I'm anxious to get this beer in the bottle and see just how its going to taste.  I'm a little upset that I used Fermentis Dry Ale yeast instead of paying the 11 dollars more to get a Scottish Ale Yeast, I'm reading that I'll miss some of that smokey flavor consistent with a traditional Scottish Ale, but I was going for cheaper.  Shrug and Press On.  There is always next time..........

A Beer Review......

I may be partial but my official review of my first all grain beer is in a word......wonderful.  If anyone has had Widmer Hefe, it tastes a lot like that.  Low alcohol content at 3.8%, but a nice beer to drink.

I'm still working on clarity but I'm a big fan of my new all grain obsession.  Its a good looking beer for sure with a light sweeter taste.  The dry hopping didn't over power the beer which was nice.  Here are another couple of pictures of  "Ya Know What?"

As you can see my Brown Bear with McKinley in the background glass beer mug, makes the beer look even better.  But over all, it was a great learning experience and a good beer.

Until next time.....

Let the Brewing Adventures Begin.....

Welcome to my new blog format. Or focus, either way we are headed on a Beer Brewing Adventure together. As I looked around to all the beer brewing sites and forums, I've noticed that a lot of the people you may come in contact with or read their views and such, are really eager to help out others and get them into the fine and fun art of brewing beer at home. I'm no exception, I love to brew my own beer and I'm really excited to share what I know with others. Make no mistake, I'm no expert, but hope to one day be considered in the same group as Jim Koch (owner of Boston Brewing Co, maker of Sam Adam's Beer) and Charlie Papazain (Author, and considered in my opinion as one of the foremost knowledgeable authorities on home brew/brewing). One other thing I've noticed though is the fact that most of the websites and forums is that everyone talks as though you already have some sort of idea as to how to do this and what the terms all mean. I'm still learning, and I've brewing beer and making mead for 6 years now.....so I want to help you out if you don't have any idea, and maybe get you interested in this wonderful and rewarding hobby....the easy way.


Well folks here we go. Above you can see what will hopefully be my last "extract" brew. Well, actually its not mine. I did the brewing, but it was with ingredients from a good friend of mine. I showed him how the process of home brew went, and he got really excited about it and started coming up with some good recipes of his own. This beer is a red honey wheat, he calls Garrison's Red Cap. He was unable to brew with the ingredients he had because he was moving from where I am in Alaska to where he is now in Minot, North Dakota. So while its not my last extract brew, it was hopefully the last extract beer that I'll brew. That's right, I'm embarking on the All-grain adventure. And I'm going to take you along for the ride, that is if you are interested in Beer, Brewing Beer, Drinking Beer, and pretty much anything else there is to know about beer. Speaking of, my buddy started two websites completely devoted to beer and beer brewing. One is his blog http://www.homebrewingdepot.blogspot.com/ and the other is a one stop shop for beer brewing equipment and ingredients, http://www.beerbrewersdepot.info/ I highly recommend you go and check out his sites as well.

Well, on to the good stuff. Above you can see Garrison's Red Cap in the fermentor just after I pitched the yeast.

Lesson #1- Terms. I will try and explain terms as I talk about them, or if you have specific questions on something I may have missed, or would like to add to the post, please comment.

Pitching the yeast is just a fancy term for adding the yeast to your wort for fermentation.

There are some more words/terms.

Yeast is the GOOD form of bacteria that converts sugars to Ethyl alcohol, or the alcohol that we can drink.

Wort is the term given to the liquid that becomes beer, before fermentation, or the conversion of the sugars to alcohol.

I hope I'm not going to fast.

Your basic process for brewing an extract beer goes something like this.....

After choosing what kind of beer you would like to do, you need to ensure you have all the right equipment for the job. A burner of some sort to heat your brew kettle, a brew kettle (something to boil your wort in), a thermometer, a fermenter (someplace for your wort to transform into beer), 5 pounds of extract (the thick molasses like syrup bought from your local home brew store), yeast, hops (the "spice" of beer, amount will depend on your preference and recipe), and water. For the sake of an easy lesson, lets just say we are doing a 5 gallon batch of amber ale.

Depending on the size of your brew kettle and burner, you may be able to either add all of the water for the batch or add water to it later, simple math I'm sure you can figure out for your situation. First and foremost you want to make sure all of your materials are clean and sanitized, the introduction of BAD bacteria could ruin your beer. Next you will want to add water to your brew kettle to about half of what your kettle can hold and heat your water to about 158-165 degrees and remove it from the heat source. Then you will add your extract and mix it in careful not to burn it on the bottom of the kettle. Place the kettle back on the heat source and heat to a rolling boil. Here is where extract brews can get messy. The extract in reaction to reconstituting itself with the hot/boiling water, creates a foamy mess that will boil up and over if you are not watching or paying attention to what you are doing. An easy solution is to continuously lift the kettle straight up, so its still in the heat but not on the heat, and keep doing this until the foam settles and stays down. So as not to lose any of the wonderful hop essence, I always waited until the foaming settled to add my hops. Again, depending on your beer and preference, this is your first hop addition. Play with it until you get your preferred method and measurements but for me it was always a 2-1 ratio. If I added 2 oz. of hops at the beginning, I'd add 1 oz. at the end. For this we will add 2 oz. of hops at the beginning, and once the hops have been added and the extract is mixed in, you will start a 60 minute boil. You now have wort. This boiling helps to ensure a clean and sanitary beer as well as prepares the sugars in the extract for fermentation. For the next 40-50 minutes, there isn't much else to do but monitor your wort, and have a beer while you wait :) Either 20 minutes or 10 minutes, again based on your preference, you will need to add the second installment of hops. For our purposes its a 1 ounce, and then continue the boil. At the conclusion of the boil, your main focus is to as quickly as possible, cool your wort to 60-75 degrees. This is done because the yeast need a temperature in that range to start working to ferment the sugars to Ethyl alcohol. And the quicker it is accomplished the less of a chance you have of adding something potentially harmful to your beer and it will also prevent whats called "chill haze", or cloudy beer. A simple way to manage this the cheap and easy way, is to fill your sink with cold cold water, and place your brew kettle in the water, stirring the wort around and measuring the temperature consistently. Now depending on whether or not your beer store representative gave you some insight to hop bags, you will need to filter your beer to remove any bits and pieces of hops or grains or what ever else might be lurking in the wort. An easy way for me was to stretch a dish cloth over my fermenter, and slowly pour the wort through it. (For an cheap and easy Fermenter you can make yourself, see below) Once you have poured your now chilled wort into the fermenter, you can pitch the yeast on top, and seal it up. Your bubbler, or air lock on the fermenter, will keep bad air and bacteria from entering your fermenting wort while still allowing the release of gasses from the yeast converting sugars to ethyl alcohol. You will want to let that sit now for 14 days, and in that 14 days you will need to gather, 3/4th of a cup of corn sugar, a racking tube (or basically a siphon with tube), bottle caps, approximately 48-50 pop top bottles (my favorite way to get bottles is to drink store bought beer with pop tops, wash them out real well to use), and a bottle capper. After the 14 days are up, you will need to condition your beer, note I didn't call it wort, cause its beer now. To condition your beer it would be best to take 1 cup of water and add the 3/4ths cup of corn sugar and heat to a boil. This will add just enough fermentable sugar to restart the yeast again, so when you bottle, it will carbonate itself with the pressure, or finish. Once you add the corn sugar and water to your beer, stir it in a couple of times to mix it in but don't stir too much as to disturb the gunk at the bottom. This gunk is a mixture of yeast and such called slurry. The bottles you have collected will have to have been sanitized before you add your beer, but fill them to about 2 inches from the top, and cap them. You will want to place them in a cool dry place to finish/condition for about 14 days. After 7 days you can open one to see if your beer is properly carbonated, if they are, you can start to chill and drink them, otherwise wait another week, chill and enjoy. When you do finally get to enjoy the fruits of your labor, there will be some of that same yeast slurry in the bottom of the bottles you won't see with some domestic beers, its ok if some of this gets consumed, its actually loaded with vitamins, but some don't like the taste so you can wash it out of the bottle and keep the bottle for the next batch.

That was a lot of information, but its easier than it sounds, and you will be itching to get your next beer going soon.

Now onto uncharted territory------The All Grain Brew

I have yet to even start my first All Grain Brew, but I've been reading up and believe I may have an idea as to what to do. My first endeavor was to make a Mash/Lauter Tun (MLT). Mash is the process of extracting the fermentable sugars from the grains that will be used in the beer, and Lautering is the process of separating the sweet wort from the spent grains. A Tun, is just the container used to do it in, at some point was actually a unit of measure equal to that of a ton in gallons/quarts. An MLT is essential to the all grain process, without it there would be no wort to boil and convert to beer. I decided I would make my own instead of buying one, hence doing it the cheap way. Heres what I did......

First you will need to find a cooler, buying a cheap 5-10 gallon cooler will work, just make sure there is a spout on it for drainage, you could buy one for$17-25. I used a 10 gallon Coleman cooler I already had.

Next get about 5 feet of Stainless Steel Braided tubing, like the kind used for dishwashers and washing machines, depending on what you can find, mine was $9.00.

You will also need a couple of hose clamps, I got a set of two for $1.20.
And lastly you will need some sort of valve, I'm using a ball valve that already had the connections for the size of tube I bought for simplicities sake but it cost me $8.50.

In total I spent a little over $19.

First thing I did was clean out the cooler really well to include the spout that was already on the cooler. Next I removed the spout by unscrewing it and then set it aside. Next I went to removing the stainless steel braid from the hose by completely cutting one end off the tube and carefully severing the braid from the tube at the end that still had the connector. Then i measured a 10-12 inch piece of the tube from the connector and cut the rest of the tube off. This portion of the tube is more for stability and the connection of the stainless steel braid and for carrying sweet wort out of the MLT into your brew kettle. Next I took the spout from the cooler and pushed it onto the tube leaving 8 inches to where the inside of the cooler would be. Of those 8 inches the last 4 i cut a slanted groove, making a sort of spoon like tray opening the hole on the tube. Next I crimped one end of the stainless steel braid by folding it over and then using a hose clamp, placed the other end of the stainless steel braid over the tubing and closed the clamp on it and the crimped end of the stainless steel braid to make a loop. As seen below, I fit the connector end of the tubing from the inside of the cooler to the out side with the braid attached, added duct tape (just a personal preference) and screwed the outside of the cooler spout back on.

I noticed that my tube was not water tight, so I added some simple bathroom caulking to the openings surrounding the tubing and let dry before trying again for water tightness, and even added boiling water because you will be adding some pretty hot water to the MLT and it will need to work with that.

Next I screwed the valve onto the connector end and, its finished, a homemade Mash/Lauter Tun!!!

When I actually get to the brewing, I'll get into the process, just so I can sound smarter than I really am and get some more research under my belt.

Below is the cheap and easy way to make a fermenter for less than $15. I made mine for $7.

Materials you will need:

5 Gallon bucket with lid that is air and water tight---any hardware store can sell these, I got mine for $3.

Caulking- don't need much, spend what you want to on it. I spent $3.

Tubing- like the kind you would use for air in a fish tank. I got 10-15 feet at a fish store for $1

and an old Medicine bottle----just grab one you have lying around that's not needed anymore.

All you will be doing is dealing with the lid so set the bucket aside. Next drill a small hole just big enough for the tubing to fit through snugly, Then take the medicine bottle and do the same to the side of the neck of the bottle. Remove any threads or mechanism from the cap that would restrict easy removal of the bottle lid from the medicine bottle for ease later. Cut a 8-12 inch piece of tube and insert it into the lid so the opening would be in the bucket, about 1 inch and caulk the tubing to the lid on the top and bottom careful not to get caulk into the tube. see below

Next push the tubing to the bottom of the medicine bottle.....you can also attach the medicine bottle to the lid but its not really needed.

And there you have it, a cheap and easy way to make your own fermenter and MLT. I hope you will enjoy and continue to read this blog and new post about my Brewing Adventure continue....

Until Later.....

RDWHAHB

Relax, Don't Worry, Have A Home Brew