Friday Brewing, and another try at live blogging...

Today is a brew day, and I'm going to live blog it for thoese of you out there stuck at work. I'll be working from home during the brew, trying to figure out if extra-marital affairs of the over 55 population correlate to religion. I tried this before -- the blogging, not the old-people sex -- with limited succcess. I got bored and thought the post was getting pretty boring as well. This time I'll try to toss in some antecdotes, some pictures and some better descriptions.

The beer turned out crappy, by the way, due to my fucking up with the yeast. See, I had hoped to pitch on a yeast cake, but it was a low flocculent yeast, and I was worried about pitching essentially onto the remains of the last beer, as a cake hadn't really formed well. So I pitched an un-expanded pack of Wyeast, as I didn't want to expand it and waste it. Now I know an expanded pack lasts for weeks in the freezer- so I'll do that next time.

Here is today's recipe, my first with Beer Smith. [Sidebar: I'm really pleased with Beer Smith] 

Style: Special/Best/Premium Bitter

TYPE: All Grain

Taste: (35.0) 

Recipe Specifications

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Batch Size: 5.25 gal      

Boil Size: 7.32 gal

Estimated OG: 1.042 SG

Estimated Color: 9.2 SRM

Estimated IBU: 28.4 IBU

Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %

Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:

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Amount        Item                                      

6 lbs 8.0 oz  Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)

12.0 oz         Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)

8.0 oz        Wheat, Torrified (1.7 SRM)

6.0 oz           Victory Malt (25.0 SRM)

1.00 oz         Williamette [4.80 %]  (60 min)

0.50 oz        Willamette [4.30 %]  (Dry Hop 7 days)

0.50 oz         Williamette [4.80 %]  (30 min)

0.50 oz         Williamette [4.80 %]  (10 min)

0.26 tsp       Irish Moss (Boil 15.0 min)

1.00 gm       Salt (Mash 60.0 min)

2.00 gm       Baking Soda (Mash 60.0 min)

5.00 gm       Epsom Salt (MgSO4) (Mash 60.0 min)

22.00 gm    Gypsum  (Mash 60.0 min)

Yeast           London Ale (Wyeast Labs #1028) [Starter 500ml ]

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body

Total Grain Weight: 8.13 lb

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Single Infusion, Medium Body

Step Time     Name               Description                         Step Temp     

60 min        Mash In             Add 9.99 qt of water at 168.3 F     152.0 F       

10 min        Mash Out           Add 6.00 qt of water at 200.7 F     168.0 F       

We'll fly sparge with about 5 gallons of 168F water. Nothing has happened yet, but I'll keep updating this post throughout the day, maybe with some pictures. Right now I'm waiting for my brewing buddy to show up, then we'll clean, organize and get the mash on.

11am- still haven't started brewing. I'm trying to dial in my system a bit more. just under 5" is 5 gallons, and 5 3/8" is 5.75 gallons, which should get me 5.25 gallons with .5 gallon of trub left in the pot, I hope. Today I'll shoot for 6" of beer.  I'm guessing with my boil off I need *about* 7 gallons to start. This should let me boil off just over a gallon of wort during my boil (maybe more, beersmith calculates I need 7.38 gallons). That measurement is just over 6.5 (7 gallons). I'll shoot for 6.5" to boil down to just over 5" of beer. This should let me get a nice 5 gallons-ish. For mash, 2 gallons is 2", 2.5 gallons is 2.5".

We mashed in 8#6oz of grain with 10qts of 168F water, which turned out to be a hair high, due to my monkeying with beersmith. I'm getting drastically varying readings, as the mash tun is barely 1/4 full, so the top and bottom of the mash have very different temps (6F difference). 5 minutes in our mash we were at 155F, 15 in we were are 152, and 30 min in we are still at 152F. We're going to start getting our 5 gallons up to 178F (the HLT eats about 10F), so we can sparge at 168F. After an hour we'll try to get our 6qts up to 200F for the mashout, definitely needed with the short grain bed today.

Well, the water is up for mashout and sparge, but the grain hasn't converted after almost two hours. I forgot to put a coat on the cooler, which I usually do. Between that and some intentional heat loss earlier due to a high mash in, It got down to the mid 140s. I just added a quart of boiling water to try and get the temp back up to around 152, then I'll sit it for another 10 minutes. I'll then mash out as discussed earlier and hope it works out. Next time, I'll trust the computer! Gah!

First wort is 1.032 at 146F = 1.050. 

We'll run out between 6.5 and 7" of wort (around 7 to 7.5 gallons) and will boil down to 6 gallons. I figure we'll have .75 loss in deadspace in the bottom of the kettle (trub)... We put 7" (7.5 gallons) into boil. Cock-up of the day, I hold the ruler up with a magnet, which I just dropped into the bottom of my metal, ferrous, stainless steel pot. Ha!

Alright, so I've got the wort about boiling. The gravity going into the pot was 1.037, so I have 90% efficency from the mash into the pot. That's pretty awesome, but I lose a ton of efficency in the boil because I can't get enough heat on it. Yeast issue now- I have 2 starters going, a scottish yeast and an old 1028 that I stored. The 1028 is from the fall, the scottish from the winter. I tasted both (they've been fermenting for like a week). The Scottish tastes bland, but the English tastes like rubber. So I'm not sure what to do, continue making the bitter and pitch it onto Scottish, use the English anyway, or change over to making a scottish (one hop addition and kettle carmalize a gallon / gallon and a half... I'm thinking just go to scottish, the base is similar, if this is a tad too adjuncty for a scottish...

Alright. We've decided to scrap the english yeast. It tastes like rubber and is probably beyond dead, despite its fermenting out. Luckily, and historically, the Scottish 70/ is akin to an English bitter with Scottish water and scottish yeast, less hops and more carmel. Well, we just ran out of English yeast, so our English bitter is a scottish ale. DODGE AND WEAVE PEOPLE, KEEP UP, KEEP UP! So, same recipe. One hop addition of .75oz of Willamette for 60 min. I've got a 5qts burning away on another pot, we'll let it go as we cool the main beer down, hoping it will carmelize down to around .5 gallons by the time the rest of the beer is cool. Then we'll cool that, put it in, take a gravity reading and move along. I'd like to thank the English for letting me down again! Bah! So, accidental Scottish ale, welcome into being. Sure, we were drunk on bad rye beer when we went into that mini-golf windmill, but we made something beautiful. Hell, my last accident (a scottish ale turned porter) took a medal in a new brewer category. So, Scotland, he're to sloppy creation and wonderful accidents!

Got 5 gallons, pitched yeast at a little over 70F. We got 89% efficency out of the grains!! but only  70% out of the system, meaning that our boiling isn't working right. We are either getting to low of a heat from the stove to get a rolling boil, or something else. I'm thinking we might need to boil with the lid part-way on to keep the heat in. Having the extra pot might have limited our boil temp too. 

Pitched a yeast slurry- the beer on top of the starter was pretty tasty and smoky. The wort was good and had some nice nuttiness thanks, I think, to the victory. The wort wasn't very sweet due to the low temp, but had a nice color and taste. Next time I won't be so afraid of the carmel and will be sure to further insulate the mash tun (doubly stupid as there is a coat hook and a coat behind where the tun goes. It sucks about the yeast, thankfully I had a backup and tasted before the hop additions. I think we saved ourselves here- but I clearly need to get the mash temp stuff down and trust my calculations. A good brew day, and hopefully it'll ferment out for kegging on Friday, for a party Sunday (a stretch, I know).

Fermentation Friday - Cheese it! It's the fuzz!

Cleanliness is next to godliness. Old phrase. It has its origins in ancient Hebrew, someone who may or may not be full of shit once claimed. But the expression has more than age to lend it credibility. Science, practical experience, and riding the bus all bear this out. Letting sanitation slip is something you'll pay for in the end. Let your car stay dirty, it'll be more prone to rusting. Let your body get dirty, and you get hit on by Brad Pitt. Let food you're cooking get dirty, and some guy with mutton chops projectile vomits chicken fried steak into a stranger's yard as his car sits with blinkers on in the middle of the road. But in the home brewing world, being dirty can lead to even more horrific results.

Now, Paddy and I are pretty careful when it comes to cleaning our brewing equipment. We dish out the no-rinse pretty generously, and even give it a rinse with hot water after that, in spite of the product's name. It's served us well, other than the fact that it will most certainly kill both of us in some rare or possibly even as-yet-undiscovered way. Every time we open the container, the powder becomes airborn, and we invariably inhale some of it. It can't be good for us.

But even with being so cautious and clean, there have still been some failures related to sanitation. Three stick out in my mind.

Ginger beer. Beer with ginger. Simple idea, right? It was an interesting experiment we'd hoped would lead to epic drunkenness. We essentially brewed up a really light beer with a shitload of ginger in it. 2 weeks later, we had something surprisingly interesting, but it lacked the sweetness we had hoped for. So we decided to blend in some sugars and let it sit for awhile. A quick sample spiked with sugar seemed to confirm this was the way to go. So we heated up a small amount of water on the stove, and began stirring in various sugars. The water was at a simmer. I asked if we should boil it, and Paddy said "Nah, it'll dissolve just fine this way." (If you're keeping score, this was the mistake.) We cooled it, poured it in, racked it into a carboy for good measure, and let it sit with a fermentation lock on it. Two weeks later, we anxiously opened up the carboy and took a big whiff. It smelled like someone had pissed in a sweaty gym sock.




If we had sterilized the sugar water we added, we might have had a couple cases of a wonderful sweet, bitter, alcoholic concoction. But instead, we dumped the awful swill down the drain and chased it with Clorox. Fail.

Wine has had the similar problems twice for Paddy and me. Once was a strawberry wine that ended up moldy. Brown fuzz climbing up the sides of the bucket. Yeah... that shit got Cloroxed before dumping it. I commented that it made the whole room smell like a pool, not bleach. Paddy would later open his pool for the first time, and learn in his research that was the smell of death. Then, most recently, we brewed up a bucket full of blueberry fail. Or rather... didn't brew it. Which was the problem again. Paddy tells me the bucket is currently filled with green fuzz, so at least we're achieving some variety in our mold cultures.

So to close it all up here, I'm going to boil the ingredients for all my beers and wines from now on. I mean, just boil the shit out of it. Literally. Kill anything that's in there. That, and hold my breath when scooping out the no-rinse.

Fermentation Friday-- Sanitation

All of my friends have some sort of phobia in brewing. One is terrified of yeast, another is afraid of all-grain. I am afraid of bacteria. I can't get through the idea that I sanitize things, then expose them to air before putting them back in my beers. So... I sanitize everything, below is the rough process.

First, I oxyclean everything. I use the stuff from Costco- blue specks and all. It is cheap, easy and cuts through any mess. I then make up 2 gallons or so of Star-San. I love the foam. Really. I try to keep a bucket of star-san ready the whole day. I clean and then star-san the boil pot, ditto the mash tun and hot liquor tank (another 5-gallon tun). I also clean and sanitize all the hoses. At this point, I'm not worried about the beer going bad, but I gather all bacteria tastes bad, whether or not it ruins the beer. When I add in the Irish Moss (15 min left) I make sure to clean the immersion chiller with vinnegar, rinse and hit it with the sanitizer (which at this point holds all of the spoons and other equipment to touch the wort after it is cooled). I then let the coil sit for the last five minutes of the boil, put the lid (re-sanitized) back on the pot for the last two minutes of the boil and then put the flame out. I then start the chilling and put a gallon of star san into the carboy and shake for a minute. It is then put upside down in a bucket so it can drain out the foam (as much as possible). Eventually, I'll put a sanitized zip-loc over the neck and let it set out. The beer goes in and a blow-off is put into a gallon jug full of sanitizer that had been used to clean things previously. In secondary, I sanitize the airlocks with whiskey, drinking when we fill them for good luck. Tedious, boring but effective so far. If only I was so careful with my yeast.

Perfection is an affront to god

Weavers and Builders in the Islamic world always put in a purposeful slight imperfection into their product, because perfection would be an affront to god. I'm not sure that in our brewing, or our drinking, that we should subscribe directly to this protocol, putting in a purposeful flaw, but it provides a relatively compelling introduction to this post.

My erstwhile companion in starting this blog, bJames, has suggested that perfection should be our goal. Our brewing should become metered and consistent, but I wonder how far. Were all beer to come out the same I would not drink out, I would just bring my beers in. I live in a state with relatively easy liquor laws, and going out for the $5 draft could be avoided with a $3 single bottle, closer to my house. Where I could also be assured no unrine but my own is on the toilet seat (thankfully the cat has gotten over his most recent bouts with a nasty UTI). So the draft is different- it sits in the keg, pumps through lines and into my glass. There is more carbonation, it dances a little, the beer has traveled, not alone, but with friends, been through some new and interesting narrow channels and has come to tell me what it has learned. Still, it is pasteruized and pressurized to the point that almost any idiot can get it to me in a reasonably consistent condition (except for the knuckleheads at the campus bar-- with the gall to charge a membership fee no less-- for beers that are priced and sourced as premium but pushed through lines that would make the Hilton's plubming look hygenic).

But, perhaps I digress-- beer is alive. As our friends out in California remind us, beer is teeming with living organisms. Any batch of drinkable beer is the result of a miracle of the right bugs eating the right sugars to make the right alcohols-- and flavors too. The British, as I may have mentioned before, love their cask ales. These beers are alive when the hit the floor and are kept by cellarmen and cellarwomyn who keep them the best they can. The elements affect the beers, they leave the brewery in under two weeks from inception. The drive, the cellar, the tempature, season, pollen, lines, other beers, spiders, they all conspire to make the beer different every time. These beers are alive, and I am alive. Sure, I've gone home with migranes from poorly kept beer, sold past its date by landlords who can't sell 6.5 gallons of the same beer in a week. This when they only have a few taps. But I've also had exquisite beers this way, that will never be the same again, only fleeting memories to be replaced by new ones as I try them again. It is the same with brewing- while ending up with radically different brews isn't desirable-- things change and we need to embrace that. 

My beer is alive, sitting in bottles in my closet as the whims of my landlord drive the heat in my house around 10 degrees, with the Chicago weather doing the same for another ten. Beers get better, they get worse, the age. I'll keg soon, but there will still be yeast alive chaing the profile of the beer. We can know a lot about our beers- we can take them to near perfection. But actual perfection-- beer brewed in nine locations in the US tasting exactly the same every day regardless of the season. Miller High Life being innoculated against skunking? These are technical marvels fitting of the first nation to put a man on the moon, sure. But they are also an affront to us as living beings, to nature, to our world, and, of course, to god.