Notes on the Bottom Hefe

I was side tracked by work, and life and haven't had a chance to post notes on my latest batch of brew - a German style Hefeweisen that I brewed in a full blown partial mash. It's the most complex brewing session I've done, and also the beer that I made the mostly stupid mistakes brewing. Don't worry, they shouldn't present a quality issues, it's more of a yield hit. Nothing irritates an engineer more than loss of yield, especially when the product is precious beer.

Grains: 2 lb Wheat Malt (maybe german, probably not), 1.5 lb Belgian Pilsner Malt, 4 oz Munich Malt mashed in at 99, 30 minute rest at 120, 45 minute rest at ~150 (thermometer issues) sparged at or near 170.
Liquid Extracts: 4 lb Briess CBW Bavarian Wheat Malt Extract
Hops: 0.5 oz Hallertau (60), 0.25 oz Hallertau (30), 0.25 oz Hallertau (5).
Yeast: Wyeast #3056 Bavarian Wheat Yeast
Etc: 1 tsp Irish Moss (30 min) - Yes, I know it violates the purity laws but I had turbidity issues related to limitations in my partial mash set up

One of the suggestions I read about brewing wheat beers was to mash in at low temperatures to help the enzymes in the wheat start moving about. With the amazing power of our kitchen stove, that was not difficult. I mashed in about a gallon of water and kept it at 99 for 10 minutes before raising the temp to 120. This rest was for some saccrification, and then I slowly raised the temp to 150. I kept it at about 150 for 45 minutes.


I used a warm water bath to help control the temperature of my pot, and added hot water to keep things stable. Occasionally, I had to remove the pot, and give it a pulse of heat but the bath worked well for holding temp.

I upgraded my lautering tun design by adding tinfoil to the sides of the strainer. It worked pretty well. I also used a piece of tin foil with little holes to distribute my 1.5 gallons of sparge water over the grain bed. I added this 170 degree water one ladle at a time.

Wheat has more protein than barley, so wheat mashes run a greater risk of gumming up. I didn't recirculate my wart sufficiently, and was a bit worried about my flow rates so I occasionally shook the lautering tun. My wort wasn't as clear as I had hoped.

The boil went smoothly except that I tried converting Dry Extract weight to liquid extract on the fly, with my shoddy memory and ended up adding 0.2 lb less extract than I could have. I diluted my batch to a gravity of 1.050 (target range 1.050-1.054) and not to a 5 gallon batch volume. My error didn't cost quality, it just hurt quantity.

I'm not sure of the origins of the grains. I'd like them to be European but have a feeling that they are American. The extract company is based in Wisconsin and is very proud of owning all parts of their process. I'm hoping that they have some Canadian grains - or at worst Wisconsin grown. Those would be more European in character and less protenatious. Either way. Higgins approved of the extract.

I pitched the yeast at a temperature of about 55 F, and fermented between 68-70. The Germans have a rule of thumb that the sum of the pitching and fermentation temperatures should be about 30 C. I didn’t quite hit that, but I followed the guidance of pitching cool to ferment warm. The primary went on for four days before I bottled and primed with 1.75 qts of gyle.

I fermented the bottles at 68 or so for a week, and have begun a month of cold conditioning. Right now they’re at 55 but I’ll drop their temp 5 degrees a week for 4 weeks (well I’ll go down to 37).

Premature Racking? Obsessive Racking

Tuesday night, I racked the Temple Street Mild. It had appeared to have a vigorous fermentation, and had slowed it's bubbling substantially. The krausen hadn't completely fallen, but was on a speedy decline. There was also significant sedimentation. I was surprised to find that the current gravity was 1.020. It's only 50-75% done fermenting. I suppose that would be a fine time for the typical german diacetyl rest. British beers need it as much or more than lagers.

Of course, the temperature has dropped, and it's now fermenting at 68 instead of 70. I'd need to raise it up to get the yeast active in converting any potential diacetyl into something less buttery.

At the same time, it's good to have the beer off of the trub. Dead yeast cells autolyse (self destruct) and yield off flavors.

I may end up racking a second time this weekend, and raise the temp up to 71 or so for a 2 day diacetyl rest and have a sediment free tertiary fermentation. Typically commercial breweries use conical fermenters, and draw off the sediment daily. I’m not just obsessive about this. Sediment is a real issue. A crazy part of me wants to start fermenting upside down but the engineer in me knows that I'd take a massive yield hit doing that with these carboys.

Brew and Bottle Day

Some triumph of scheduling resulted in my taking Saturday to bottle Pay It Pale Ale, and brew my next mild. With a little better pre-planning and organization the brew/bottle day might be reasonable. This time, it was hectic. Everything needed to happen at once.

The mild that I brewed was based on a variant of Jasper's Vat House Mild Ale recipe. He suggested the extra chocolate malt to brew up a really dark mild. I used some partial mashing to practice the technique. Knowing full well that the grains I was using had been stripped of the enzymes that make mashing effective. This second attempt revealed a number of issues with my set-up (all kitchen ware). It might make more sense to work on getting a larger brew pot before taking partial mashing much further.

The original gravity of this brew is 1.042 and should finish between 1.010 and 1.005. I pitched the yeast at 75 degrees, and let it ferment overnight. This morning it was still at 70, and had an inch and a half of krausen. I took the fermenter outside, to drop it to a more comfortable temperature and it's moving along very well at 68. We're picking up a chest freezer today, so I can get giggity glaven about temperature.

Specialty Grains: 3 oz Dehusked Carafa III Malt, 6 Oz 40L Crystal, 6 oz Chocolate Malt. (Mashed in at 140, mashed between 150-160 (w/ a dip to 140)
Liquid Extracts: 3.3 lbs. Muntons Light Malt extract Syrup, 1.1 lbs of Munton's Munton's Amber Malt Extract, 1.1 Lbs of Wheat Malt Extract
Hops: 1 oz. Challenger 8 AAU (60 min), ~0.5 Oz Kent Goldings 2.4 AAU (40 min), ~0.5 Oz Kent Golding 2.4 AAU(5 min)
Yeast: Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast
Etc: 1 tsp Irish Moss (15 min)

The bottling portion of the day went smoothly. The final gravity of Pay It Pale ale was 1.005, suggesting a brew with 5.9% ABV. I re-boiled my gyle to sterilize it before dumping it into the Pay It fermenter. I wish that I strained out the collagen and trub before heating it, as most of the sediment dissolved upon heating, and will now just precipitate out in the bottles. I think Kate's labels look excellent.

Ranco Temperature Controler

I've scoured the internet, and it doesn't seem as though I can find a nice, cheap external thermostat for my freezer conversion. This excellent digital model is catching my eye for a minor increase in cost.

http://honeyrunapiaries.com/store/goldline-sp30-replacement-ranco-p-88.html?osCsid=cf716d1fa72e353430d7300fe17266f0 This apiary supplier's price beats Grainger's list, but not quite my company discount. We'll have to see if I can order the controller with my personal card and have it shipped to work.

Book Review: Mild Ale - David Sutula

Brewers Publications has a Classic Beer Style Series of books that include historical details of beer styles, ingredient information, typical flavor profiles, and traditional brewing techniques in a single package designed to appeal to beer enthusiast and home brewers alike. There's a difficult balance to strike between readability, and robust technical detail. Admittedly, I worried that the goal of readability would kill the technical usefulness of the books. The balance seems just about right (on average) there are some technical gaps and excessive readability.

David Sutula's Mild Ale is the first of the series that I've read. the history was interesting, and the general technical info quite competent. I will admit that the author's credibility was diminished by the 1999 copyright date, and his continual reference to Cleveland area breweries that were not in existence or operation during my time in Cleveland (98-03). There was a lot of turnover in the flats during that time, so it and at least one other place failed to keep business open at the same address.

Of course, Cleveland's role in the history of the mild is limited. In fact all of the history is in England, where it belongs. Sutula makes a strong effort to show the evolution of traditional brewing in England, and explain the relative fogginess about the specifics of the mild style. He even addresses the curious line between the Mild and Brown, and complains about the marketing jerks that label their milds browns because they lack the stones to stand by the traditional style.

From a technical standpoint, it was very interesting to read a book that took an application specific approach to techniques an unit operations that I've read so much about in general home brewing texts, and on websites. While those resources have dragged a bit, and felt like text books minus key equations, the style specific focus made that reading fluid. I would have enjoyed a bit more detail about home brew scale equivalents for hop backs, and small volume casks/firkins. It also would have been nice to see some alternatives to sugar priming, unless of course the Brits always sugar primed.

I can't complain too loudly. There are carbonation tables and a few recipes (all grain, and extract) and in the back. I would have liked a few more recipes, as he includes ingredients lists for a number of commercial milds. A clone recipe would be nice - if only to provide insight when crafting my own recipes. In all fairness, the specialty grain bill attached to some of the extract batches borders on mini-mash scale. It's cool for me, but might intimidate some brewers.

There was also a table of "statistics" didn't understand. The author tabulated starting gravities and ABV for a large number of British and micro milds. It would have been excellent if he was kind enough to provide an average and standard deviation on this data. Then, perhaps we could define the style as the mean +/- 3 standard deviations. It would be extra cool if they could do the same thing with IBUs and color. I'm a geek.