I've got planned for this sunday to do Charlie Papazian's Silver Dollar Porter from his Complete Joy of Homebrewing book. It'll be interesting to do since I've actually got the exact yeast strain he used to develop the recipe with (the Cry Havoc yeast from White Labs.) So my only diversion from his recipe will be that I'm using Maris Otter malt instead of domestic 2-row. Should be good anyway I think.

The beer cellar is coming along good. The plan is to start buying two or more of the same beers so I can taste one now and age the other to see the difference. Some beers seem to age better than others. It'll be interesting to see which ones favor age and which ones seem to taste better fresh.

Yesterday the AHA had a membership rally at the Yazoo brewery in Nashville. The event started at 2pm and we arrived soon after. We were greeted at the door by fellow MSBC member and current president Mike Semich. After a couple of the guys I rode with got signed up to join the AHA we entered into the brewery stopping off at a temporary tasting area they had setup outside with a three tap jockey box. In this jockey box they had three different IPAs on tap labeled as #1, #2 and #3. Well since there were three of us and three different beers to try we decided no matter how goofy it would look we would each get a different beer and taste it and then swap. After trying all three I came to the conclusion that Yazoo was incapable of making a bad IPA. I'm not a hop head at all and have only found a few that I can say I really like so it was a treat to taste three from one place that were excellent. After walking into the brewery we caught up to a tour that was in mid session being led by Yazoo founder and brewmaster Linus Hall. As we began listening in on what was left of the tour the rest of the crowd moved out from behind the tall conical fermenters and I looked for fellow members of the MSBC that may have gotten threr earlier. I did see one more member. Jason F. but right in front of him was a bit of a shock... it was Charlie P, the Brew Father. After mingling about for a while we asked Charlie if we could have a picture taken with him. Of course obliged (more than once actually since we had some camera issues). It was a great time. It was the first AHA event I'd ever been to, but hopefully not the last.

Cheers!

Well, I think I've figured out my summer heat chilling issues. After some discussion on our homebrew club forum I decided to give a sump pump a try in chilling. My process was as follows:

I killed the heat, draped a Star San soaked kitchen towel over my boil kettle and started running tap water thru my immersion chiller. When I hit the 100 degree mark I started running water thru the sump pump which was setting in my Gott style cooler filled with ice. The water ran thru the chiller back into the cooler w/ the pump. I only used 2 bags of ice.


Raw data:

0 mins: 212f
5 mins: 150f
10 mins: 110f
15 mins: 100f
20 mins: 77f
25 mins: 65f



















I don't think I've EVER gotten below 75f even when my tap water is cool. (currently my tap water is right at 80f) My sump pump is a 1/4 HP ~2800GPH pump with a 1 1/4" valve. I reduced that down with a 1 1/4" x 1/2" fitting then with a 1/2" MIP x 3/8" Barb fitting and attached some 3/8" hose to a female garden hose connector which attaches directly to my IC. I had originally decided to stop brewing during the hot/humid months but I think since this works I'm back to brewing anytime I can.

I'm going to give it another try this weekend and redo the infected beer I did in July.

I've had a run of bad luck with my beers lately. The Brown Ale I did a while back seems to be infected and the Ordinary Bitter I did last weekend is really infected. I mentioned this to Rich, a fellow homebrewer, and he pointed out that this was one of the reasons the Germans started lagering their beers during the summer. They found it hard to actually brew anything during the warmer months. Of course now we know that it is because of the higher amount of infectous bacteria in the air during the warmer seasons. I've come to the conslusion that I will either have to stop brewing during summer (nooooo!) or find better ways of keeping my un-inoculated wort away from the beasties that would love to ruin it. This last beer that I did I had a big issue with wort chilling. I chilled it down to 100f with my immersion chiller but after that it wouldn't drop. After I waited about 45mins for it to drop I decided to just cap it off and stick it in my fermentation box and let it cool. I came back down after about 3 hours and it was still at 80f. So, I pitched my yeast and closed it up. The yeast was a little suspicious as well. Usually when I just pitch a vial (OG=<1.040) I will just put the vial in my pocket and vent the CO2 every hour or so while I'm brewing. This vial never built up any pressure. I think the vial must have been exposed to some high temps while in shipment to my LHBS since it's "use by"date was Aug '07.

A couple of pics of my lost beer:




























My plan is to attempt another English beer this weekend, probably a Dark Mild or an ESB. That is if I get my chilling techniques down. I want to use a sump pump in a bucket or cooler of ice water to push water thru my immersion chiller and adding a ball-valve with a "hop stopper" like item on the inside to filter out the hops (I'm using leaf hops).

We'll see how this beer comes out. If it gets infected I may just have to stop brewing during the summer, or switch to extract brewing and return to the kitchen for a few months.

It's been a while since I last posted on here.. guess I've been too busy brewing. After my Brown Ale below I took a short break from brewing (not on purpose, just too busy) and then about 2 weeks ago I took a Friday and a Monday off from work to relax a litte and do some brewing. That Friday I did a Strawberry Wine, Saturday I did a Grape Mead/Pyment, that Sunday I did an Apple Cider and then Monday I did a Rauchbier (German Smoked Beer). All are fermenting away. I will be moving the wine over to a secondary fermenter here in the next few days and then soon after I'll do the mead. The cider is in a 3 gallon glass carboy so I may leave it unless I find that it should be moved as well. The Rauchbier is a lager, but since I can't keep temps in the 40s in my fermentation box I had to use the San Francisco lager yeast which is a hybrid yeast that will maintain lager characteristics at ale temps. I was able to get it to stay at around 57 degrees so this strain of yeast should be very clean. I hope with the smokey character of the beer any off flavors the yeast may impart will be masked. I also did a Barleywine yesterday (7-3-07) that is currently kicking. My target OG was 1.105 but I only hit 1.084. Dunno what happened since it was an extract batch. I think I may have had an issue with the specialty grains not being able to leech their sugars out of the muslin bags that I used. I need to pick up a few large straining bags for use during mini-mashes and extract w/ specialty grain brews. To the left is a pic of my fermentation box as it is this morning. The cider is in the carboy w/ the orange cap, the mead and wine are in the small plastic containers (1 gallon each) and the beer w/ the big frothy krausen layer is the barley wine. The Rauchbier is over to the right out of the pic.

I've decided to brew version 2.0 of my Fuzzy Weasel Head Brown Ale. I just kegged up my APA last night and I saved a pint jar of the yeast. After putting the lid on loosely and setting it in the fridge it settled into layers. On the bottom was the heavier trub, then the layer of white yeast and on top of that was a layer of beer. So, tonight in preparation of tomorrow's brew I made up a starter of about 800ml and swirled up the yeast and poured the yeast/beer into the starter to make up 1000ml. It's know spinning away on the stir plate. Hopefully it'll be good to go tomorrow when it's pitching time.

As far as the recipe goes, I've replaced the Nugget hops with Chinook and eliminated the first wort hopping. This is in response to the judges saying it should have more American hop presence. They also said it should have more balance towards the caramel malts but I decided to only change one thing at a time.

Fuzzy Weasel Head Brown Ale v2.0

Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
82.5 8.25 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.036 2
15.0 1.50 lbs. Crystal 60L America 1.034 60
2.5 0.25 lbs. Chocolate Malt America 1.029 350

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.

Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
0.50 oz. Chinook Pellet 11.90 28.8 60 min.
0.75 oz. Willamette Whole 5.00 8.4 30 min.
0.25 oz. Willamette Whole 5.00 1.5 15 min.

Extras
Amount Name Type Time
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 Tsp 5.2 Other 0 Days(mash)
1.00 Tsp Irish Moss Fining 15 Min.(boil)

Yeast
-----
White Labs WLP001 California Ale (slurry from previous)

A few members from our brew club went on a tour of the Yazoo brewery in Nashville this St. Patty's Day. Here's a few pics.



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I just got the results back from the Great Arizona Homebrew Competition. I entered my California Common and my American Brown Ale. I was expecting my Brown Ale to do pretty good and I entered the CC to get feedback. Well, turns out I won a bronze for the CC and honorable mention for the Brown Ale.

Scores were:
California Common: 31.3 (Bronze)
American Brown Ale: 32.0 (Silver scored a 33)

I'm probably going to brew the Brown Ale again to see if I can score higher next time. This is the second comp it's been in and both times it's scored in the 32 range. So, I'll go over what all the judge's comments were and tweak the recipe a little and see if I can't get it up to "Gold Standard"

Cheers!
~MB

Well, I should be fully kegging by this weekend. A friend and fellow homebrewer called while I was at work today and said he was going to All Seasons in Nashville and wanted to know if I needed anything. Not wanting to pass up a chance to buy more homebrewing "schwag", I asked him to pick me up a CO2 regulator, some beverage hose and some cobra/party faucets. All I need now is to pick up some gas line from Lowes and I'll be all set.

After working some more on my fermentation box I decided to clean and sanitize my (currently) one and only cornie keg. I filled it up with cleaner and sloshed it around a little. Then I attached the ball lock quick disconnects to the keg and hooked up my air pump that I use to aerate my wort and ran the cleaner thru the system. I then repeated the same with some Star San. After that I racked over my Belgian Pale Ale and sealed it up. Can't wait to pour me a glass from my very own kegging system.

Cheers!

I'm about to finish up on building my Fermentation Box. This will allow me to lock in a fermentation temperature that is ideal for fermenting a certain type of beer. It seems that the average temp for most Ales is 68f so that will be what I'll set it at initially. I think I can get two or three buckets and/or carboys inside the box so I'll have to make sure I get some that have similar "Ideal" temperatures.

Several of the comps I've entered the judges have said something about fruity esters in my beers. That can come from higher than ideal temps or temps going up and down during fermentations. Hopefully that will be a thing of the past now with this new toy.

The box is made from an old crate that contained an IBM server cabinet (that's why it's base is a pallet). It's insulated with two layers of 1" thick foam insulating boards. The door was a spare cabinet door that the previous owners of our house had left over after apparently redoing the kitchen.

I have a smaller door that I may add to the left side later on. I found out that the door is the perfect size for access to a corny keg. I may also divide the box inside so I can have a small section at a much lower temp (~35f) to serve the purpose of a place to store cornies used as bright tanks.

The temp in the basement while I was working on this was 41f after closing it all up and putting a small lamp with a 60 watt bulb inside the temp was up to 59f in a matter of about 10 minutes.

It's currently at 64f. I'd call that a success...

As per my flow chart, here are the steps in my brew process with pics:

1.) Enter Recipe in to ProMash

I have my brew house computer and my main computer on a network so that when I come up with a recipe or session and save it I can pull it up on the brew house computer.


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2.) Bring 1 Gallon of water to boil. Add to mash tun to adjust thermal mass

I boiled one gallon of water in my HLT and ran that into the mash tun. I figure in my HLT deadspace by running water into the HLT while the valve is open. Once water begins to run out (into a container of course) I let it run until it stops. From that point on I have basically set my deadspace to 0.



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3.) Weigh out Hops and Grain.

I would normally weigh out my grains on the scale pictured below. However this time I bought my grains at All Seasons and when I gave the lady my recipe she put them all in one bag.


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4.) Divide Hop additions into different bags.

I just use small snack bags to divide each addition. Then lable with type, order and time.


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5.) Take temperature of unmilled grains.

Decided once I put my flowchart to use that this step is pointless as long as you take the temp after milling.

6.) Have ProMash calculate strike water amount and temp.



7.) Add strike water to HLT and begin heating.

I have a large dowel with markings on one side for my HLT and on the other for my Boil Kettle giving the gallon amount. (They are different since my HLT has deadspace)


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8.) While strike water is heating mill grains.

I've got a Corona type mill that has been adjusted so that it mills/cracks and not grinds the grains into flour. I attached some air duct parts to fashion a ~5lb hopper. Then I attached a drill to the mill so I didn't wear out my arm. Sice this thing wasn't built to run that fast it will throw grains everywhere. To solve this I put a large bag over the milling plates and down into the shoot below (which is made from another duct piece). All the grains fall into a small (new) trash can sitting below.


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9.) Prepare 5.2 and Irish Moss bottles

I just use some small water bottles, ~3/4 of the way with hot water.


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10.) Verify no temp change in grains (*Change this to, Take temp of milled grains*)

Sorry, I never could get a good pic of the temp. I'm glad I took the temperature though. My grains were 51f, way lower than I had expected. Luckily I had my brew house computer handy to adjust my strike water temp.


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11.) When strike water is at temp, dump mash tun pre heat water

Didn't think you guys needed a pic of me pouring out water...

12.) Add milled grains to mash tun.

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13.) Add strike water and 5.2 to grains while stiring to break up any dough balls and ensuring there are no dry spots.


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14.) Take mash temp reading.

Right on the money.


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15.) Temp correct? Adjust if needed.

I hit it right on first try so I didn't need to adjust. I did swing by Wally World and pick up a small camp stove to have some boiling water ready just in case. Since it was still kinda cool out, and my tap water was cold my plan was to use that if I over shot my mash temp.


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15b.) Didn't want to waste all that boiling water so...

Just a little pick-me-up.


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16.) Close mash tun & note time mash started.

17.) Have ProMash calculate sparge water amount and temp.

This should really not say "...and temp", I always sparge with 170f water



18.) Begin heating sparge water to desired temp


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19.) After grains have mashed 1 hr, begin draining wort sowly into 1/2 gallon pitcher until clear.


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20.) Once wort runs clear, drain into boil kettle & recirculate the runnings /w debris.


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21.) Once all wort has run into boil kettle begin adding sparge water (if to temp) to the mash. Stirring as before.


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22.)Let sparge sit for 15 - 20 mins to allow grains to settle.

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23.) After grain bed has settled begin draining wort to boil kettle as before.

Roughly 6.5 gallons to start with.


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24.) Once all wort has drained to boil kettle take a sample for pre-boil gravity.

I Just used a Pyrex measuring cup and scooped out some to set aside to cool so I could take a reading.

25.) Begin boil, once wort begins a rolling boil add hop additions per recipe.


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26.) Add Irish Moss and IM Chiller at last 15 mins of boil.


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27.) At the end of the boil, kill burner and start chiller water.

I ran the waste water back into the sink and watched the temp of the water to make sure I was getting a good heat transfer.


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28.) Once wort has reached pitching temps (<80f) transfer to fermenter.

Didn't take a pic while I was doing this (hands were a little tied up) but all I do is pour the wort thru two strainers into the fermenter.


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29.) Aerate the wort

This is my current aeration system. Next time it will be an O2 tank. I just forgot to pick one up before starting.


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30.) Pitch Yeast

31.) Seal up the fermenter

Didn't have any plastic ones clean, so I had to use a carboy this time.


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32.) Insert air lock

33.) Move fermenter to where ever it will be during fermentation.

That's it, my brew day in pictures....


Here's a few misc pics I took:

Water filter used for RVs. $16 at Wal-Mart


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Ball Valve on my mash tun. I had an issue with the hose kinking up since I didn't have a 90 degree barb so my friend and fellow homebrewer Rich came up with the idea of bending an old clothes hanger around it. Works like a charm!


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This is the Stainless Steel braided hose inside my mash tun.


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And of course, had to keep my check list handy...


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_________________
"A mash ratio of about 1.5 quarts of water per pound grain, pH of 5.3, temperature of 150-155° F and a time of about one hour. These conditions yield a wort with a nice maltiness and good fermentability." ~John Palmer