Racking Pay It - Dry Hopping

It started snowing yesterday, setting the stage for a perfect day of screwing around with beer. Monday's batch of Pay It Pale ale was ready for racking to secondary, and I certainly wasn't going to go outside to play. My third racking had the most hickups so far.

Pay It Pale was my first attempt at partial mash brewing, and yielded a lot of goofy proteins. It's the first beer that krausened so much during primary that it actually used my blow off tube. The batch was a quart low, and the foam still escaped the carboy. It was unreal, and left a disgusting mess all over the carboy.

The yeast flocculated heavily, and partially obstructed my better bottle valve making it difficult to fill my transfer lines. I racked with partially filled lines, and probably introduced a fair amount of oxygen into my brew. Fortunately, there's still some active fermentation and hopefully the CO2 generation will displace much of that 02.

the gravity has dropped from 1.050 to 1.009 suggesting a 5.5% ABV. I'm pretty happy with this attenuation, although it took a lot of hydrometer measurements to get it. My first reading was 1.040 and I was quite irate about dealing with two stalled fermentations. I couldn't understand how my most active fermentation yet was the least effective. I measured again 1.030. One more time 1.040. What could be wrong? Then I felt like an idiot as I realized that my wine thief / hydrometer tube was not sufficiently full. The hydrometer needs to float to give a meaningful reading.

I dropped in my bag of dry hops - amarillo pellets, and will let them steep for two weeks before bottling. I tried to find whole leaf hops, but they weren't in stock at my local homebrew store. So these are wrapped up in a muslin bag that would typically be used for steeping specialty grains, however I'm semi mashing and won't put that to use any longer.

Tasting Two Batches

After two weeks of bottle conditioning, it seemed about the right time to give my first few batches a proper tasting. The results were mixed.

Clark Kent's Manners, my attempt at an English mild is dark but not as dark and roasty as we'd hoped. That's probably as much the recipe as it was my brewing. I'll have to start formulating my own soon. The ale is dark brown, and pours up a pleasant and surprisingly retentive head. There's some subtle chocolate flavors, a bit of hoppy bitterness, a nutty aroma and a butterscotch finish. It's not bad. The bottle conditioning resolved the excessive diacetyl brought on by a warm fermentation. The FG is 1.005, and the ABV is about 3.1%. It will make an excellent quaffable session brew.

Kimble's scotch ale did not fair so well. It has minimal carbonation, and forms very little head. It still tastes textured and overly sweet. The fermentation stalled out during bottle conditioning, leaving too much sugar behind. I'm heating the bottles hoping to jump start that process. If it doesn’t work in a week I will have to dump them all back in a carboy, pitch a more attenuative yeast (one that doesn't become drunk and lazy in 7% alcohol), and rebottle. I'm thinking about an aggressive American strain or some crazy Belgian action. My only concern is that the yeast will take a bite out of the 1.015 FG and explode a couple bottles. We'll see.

Partial Mash Brew Day - Pay It Pale Ale

I took some time yesterday to brew another batch. This time I brewed a pale ale. It'll end up being amber in color with some nice aroma. It's a modification of Jasper's Snowy Mountains Pale Ale recipe swapping Amarillo hops in for the over used Cascades.

Hopefully it ends up tasty. The brew will be dry hopped for extra awesomeness, and a real hop aroma. The time it takes to cool extract wort tends to cause significant losses of hop aromas. As soon as I get my large brew kettle, I will buy some copper tubing and fashion an immersion chiller to cool my wart. Until then, I have to top up the pot with as much cold water as I can fit and then dunk it in an ice bath. My aromas stay warm and disappear. If the dry hopping experiment works, I may find myself doing small dry hopping additions to non dry-hopped brews. Just wait until I dry hop some milds with simcoe.

This brew was also my first attempt at partial mash brewing. I read on-line that the carapils malt really need mashing to contribute to a brew. So I gave it a shot, and found out that I picked the wrong pan, and had less consistent temperature control than I imagined. I tried to do most of the hour at 155 to allow the magic enzymes to activate the sugars in the grain. There was a spike up to 170 (at least on the bottom of the pan) that may have caused trouble. Hopefully I didn't denature too many enzymes. The spent grains still tasted sweet, and Higgins was willing to eat them. All was not lost. I used 1 qt of water, and a cooking thermometer that didn't always stay at the bottom of the bed.

I sparged the grains with 1/2 gallon of 170 degree water, using a spaghetti strainer lined with a plastic mesh bag. It worked well. I also tried some recirculation (lifting my mash, and sparge water up and passing them over the grains). It didn't work too well. My bed depth was sufficient to yield good filtration. That’s what I get for only using a lb of grain instead of a full batch. I'll up the grain bill over time, and start designing true partial mash recipes. I guess that means it's time to get promash or some other utility.

Specialty Grains: 0.5 lbs. Carapils Malt, 0.5 lbs. 20L Crystal Malt
(Mashed in at 140, 10 minutes at 129, mashed between 150-160 (w/ 1 spike to 170)
Liquid Extracts: 6.6 lbs. Mortons Light Malt extract Syrup
Hops: 2 oz. Perle (60 min), 1 oz Amarillo (10 min)
Yeast: Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast
Etc: 1 tsp Irish Moss (30 min)

Bottling Time

After driving through Sunday's Blizzard, Kate and I came home and got ready to bottle. The secondary fermentation had been conducted between 60-62 F. I left both carboys in with the space heater for a diacetyl rest at about 68 degrees. It was time for the fun to begin.

The instant foaming and fermentation kick upon adding priming sugar to the carboys surprised me, and inspired a bit of a panic. I figured that it would need to sit a little bit before the brews were ready to bottle, and I hadn't finished sanitizing much. Kate helped out, and we put together quite an assembly line sanitizing bottles, rinsing, and treeing them, then taking turns filling and capping.

One thing I read online recently suggested seating caps on bottles, and waiting 30-60 min so that the 02 in the neck is displaced before capping. Maybe we'll try that next time.

Kimble's scotch ale tastes pretty good. The extended secondary allowed the flavors to deepen, and gain complexity. Clark’s Manners still seems too hot and yeasty. I'll chock that up to learning experience.

Also, I tasted a bit of the brews after sugar had been added. They tasted vulgar, poorly textured, and over sweet. I'm glad that will ferment completely and disappear. It's also nice that I won't sugar prime any longer. It’s such a cheap shortcut.

I will be a Keg Man

When we were in Jasper's a middle aged man raved about his keg set up, and encouraged anyone he met to upgrade to one as fast as they could. I should have taken that as a sign that my obsession would soon turn there.

Some one on BA mentioned that used corny kegs were available for $14 from Adventures in Homebrewing. I had planned to pick up a glass fermenter for beers that need longer conditioning, and SS for less seems preferable. It probably wouldn't be long before I set up a keg system.

Bottling is supposed to be hard work. I'll find out on Sunday, as I plan to bottle both Kimble's and Clark's. ooh. My next beer must not be a possesive. Kate's given me permission for a draft fridge in our dining room. I'll just need to find a fridge with room enough for two kegs, or get my thermo electric solution off the ground.

Trials and Tribulations of Chest Freezers

I saw an ad on Craigslist last Thursday for a chest freezer. For $50, I could find the end of my temperature control worries and a stable environment for aging beers during the summer. Kate rented a zipcar, and we went over to Inman square to haul this monstrosity out of a house's basement, drove it back, and lifted it up to our second floor apartment. It was no easy job, as this freezer isn't young and doesn't have handles. After breaking quite a sweat and nearly destroying two of Kate's fingers I plugged it in. The compressor rattled pretty badly for 30 seconds, then settled into a nice hum. I put a water bottle in the freezer and let it sit over night. I woke up Saturday morning to find that it was only 62 degrees. That's no good.

I emailed the nice lady who sold it to me, and she said that she'd get a refund check in the mail ASAP. Now I just need to figure out how to dispose of the beast, and I must resume my search for a fridge/freezer to convert or a thermo electric thermostat. Of course, at this rate, I may just punt and use the freezer converter thermostat from most home brew supply places.

Two More in the Pipeline

While in New Hampshire, we paid a visit to Jasper's to pick up a few cases of bottles, and the ingredients for my next two batches. I'll have a pale ale dry hopped with amarillos, and a dark mild. The owner was very helpful and modified a few of his stock recipes to help brew the beers we wanted.

He didn't have any simcoe or glacier hops, otherwise this pale ale would use those.

Dreaming of an All Grain World

Here are a couple links describing all grain systems. Some day, I'll build one. Not Today, but I'll keep these handy and browse them for ideas.

http://brewery.mvlan.net/folder/011/Homebreweries%20Directory/
http://www.brewzilla.nl/hi.htm

Right now, I'm still obsessing about temperature control. I need to figure out how to build a thermoelectric cooler with inexpensive variable temperature control.