Keezer and Fermentation Freezer

Here's a look at my fermentation freezer and keezer (keg refrigerator). They are both built from simple chest freezers that have had a wood collar installed between the base and the top-opening lid. The extra height allows for taller objects to be placed inside and, for the freezer, faucets to be installed without drilling through the freezer walls. The thermostats are over-ridden so I can precisely set the internal temperature over a much wider range than the manufacturer intended.

Four forward sealing Perlick faucets. No plated brass or hard to clean pistons. The rightmost faucet has a lever that allows the flow to be constricted, making it act like the expensive stout faucets when desired.

The inside of the keezer has a distribution manifold for pushing CO2 to 4 kegs plus an extra length of tubing that is used for purging containers and a counter-pressure bottle filler.

Inside the fermentation freezer. The height afforded by the collar allows me to ferment/condition 10 gallons where before I could only fit one large carboy. There's usually a single gallon vessel or two in here as well for small projects like mead or cider.

Wine and Beer Bottling

A couple months ago I picked up some freshly crushed grape juice from Galleano Winery. My knowledge of wine is pretty limited and I didn't think to ask much about their processing, but the "Rosé" juice is a blend of the following grapes:

• 19% Cabernet Sauvignon
• 43% Mission
• 22% Golden Chasslas
• 16% Grenache

The grapes were picked the day before and sugar content was 22 Brix. I needed the space occupied by the wine (which had been racked a couple weeks after primary fermentation) so before I bottled it I spent some time balancing with acid blend.

With a good tasting ratio determined, the wine was degassed one final time and the acid blend was incorporated. The drill seen below has a mix-stir attachment and the bottling tree is a must have. I should not have waited until after switching to kegging to buy one. 5 gallons of wine is a little more than two cases of 750mL wine bottles.

There was a keg of Saison that was just about empty so I bottled the remainder to free up space for the next beer (a Best Bitter) that'll be ready to keg soon. I bottle straight from the keg using a counter-pressure bottle filler. I don't have to mess with reducing keg pressures, I get very little foaming and beer loss, and I know the beer is carbonated exactly how I want it. The stand bottler is also much more convenient than the ubiquitous Red Baron capper.

Brewing Hardware Update

Since my last post, I have gone from extract brewing to brew-in-a-bag (BIAB) brewing to traditional all-grain brewing. Here's a quick tour of the setup:

The most unique part of my setup is a water distribution manifold which distributes ground water to the water filter, the plate chiller, and a cleaning hose. No more going back and forth to turn the water on and off throughout the brewing session.

A spray bottle with water is kept handy to prevent boilovers and the pump can be turned on and off with a conveniently located switch. There are spare outlets for things like an aeration stone pump.

My mash tun sparge arm / recirculation return is a line-loc assembly which can be adjusted to the grain bed height for reduced bed disturbance.

The kettle now has a whirlpool arm for trub separation post boil. Haven't been successful getting a dense cone of separated trub yet though. In this picture the sparge has just begun.

I have an assembly to measure the output temperature of the plate chiller and aerate inline, but have yet to use it.

Vienna Lager

Recipe based on Vienna Lager in Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer

OG: 1.050
FG: ?
Alcohol: ?% ABV
Boil: 60 minutes
Pre-Boil Volume: 7 gallons
Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.042

Extract
Northern Brewer Munich LME 4.5 lbs.
Northern Brewer Pilsner LME 4.0 lbs.

Steeping Grains
Carafa II 2.0 oz.

Hops
German Hallertau 4% AA, 60 min. 1.5 oz.
German Hallertau 4% AA, 10 min. 0.5 oz.

Yeast
White Labs Southern German Lager WLP838

Fermentation/Conditioning
Starter using 1 cup Northern Brewer Pilsner LME and 3200mL water (~1.040 wort)
Ferment at 52 F

Notes:

The ingredients. First time using LME other than the standard light version available at most local homebrew stores. Northern Brewer distributes a ton of extract, so they can afford to keep more exotic offerings and provide them fresh. Also first time using whole leaf hops.

Used 3 vials of WLP838 in a starter of Pilsner LME. The big starter with two vials is what I used for this recipe. The small starter was used for a dark Munich Lager using leftover LME/grains/hops from this batch. The big starter stayed on the stir plate for 24 hours and both received periodic aeration using my new aeration pump (blue thing with clear hosing in the picture - the white piece is a HEPA style filter).

Starters were kept at around 60 F so that I didn't have to decant off the liquid before pitching. Don't walk away from your beer while aerating. It'll look like it can handle the bubbles just fine, and then all at once you'll have foam (with precious wort/yeast) flying out.

Filling the kettle with filtered water. Note the proximity of the tubing to the lower edge of the kettle. The heat flows off the bottom of the kettle and is still very hot as it flows up the sides.

This is what happens to the vinyl tubing from the aforementioned heatwash. The hose was hung by the garage door and the pressure was not turned down; shortly after this picture was taken there was a shower of water filling the garage. Spraying water everywhere was a common theme during this session. Two sections of tubing that were not worm-clamped separated at inconvenient times throughout the morning. Nothing like repetition for learning a lesson.

Carafa II. Roasty goodness. A couple ounces is all it takes to turn 5 gallons to midnight.

Steeping the Carafa II.

Adding LME pre-boil.

Whole leaf hops! There's a certain joy to using these over the boring pellets. Not without their own problems, though.

Cooling wort with the Blichmann Therminator. The plate-chiller/hosing plugged almost immediately with hops. I knew I was taking a risk, but mistakenly thought the hops were too big to be sucked into the 1/2" dip tube in my BoilerMaker.

Since the chiller was plugged, I ended up pouring the wort into the carboy through a funnel and screen. 6 gallons of recently boiling wort is very hot and heavy, making the task unpleasant. I put the full carboy in a trash can full of ice water to bring the temp down and moved it to the chest freezer to chill down to lager fermenting temperature. Total cooling time took over 12 hours. Definitely not professional, but I have yet to have an infection so was confident the only thing I would have to be concerned with is diacetyl that may have formed during the long initial chilling. A short diacetyl rest should take care of my worries.

My awesome mother cooked a delicious meal of chicken Parmesan and artichoke to complement the American amber that had recently finished carbonating from the last brew day.

What could cap a perfect beer day? How about some Firestone 14.

American Amber

Recipe based on American Amber in Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer

OG: 1.056
FG: 1.016
Alcohol: 5.31% ABV
Boil: 60 minutes
Pre-Boil Volume: 7 gallons
Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.044

Extract
Breiss Amber LME 6.6 lbs.
Breiss Amber DME 0.7 lbs.

Steeping Grains
Crystal (40 L) 0.75 lbs.
Crystal (120 L) 0.5 lbs.
Biscuit (28 L) 0.5 lbs.

Hops
Magnum 13% AA, 60 min. 0.6 oz. (17g)
Cascade 6% AA, 10 min. 0.25 oz. (7g)
Centennial 9% AA, 10 min. 0.25 oz. (7g)
Cascade 6% AA, 0 min. 0.25 oz. (7g)
Centennial 9% AA, 0 min. 0.25 oz. (7g)

Yeast
White Labs California Ale WLP001

Fermentation/Conditioning
Starter using 0.5 cups Breiss Amber DME and 2 cups water (~1.040 wort)
Ferment at 67 F

Notes
Forgot to use whirlflocc/Irish moss
Initial wort taste test is overpowered by bitterness of Magnum hops
Interested in a Lost Coast Alleycat Amber clone and understanding how that beer has such great breadiness

UPDATE 10/10/11:
Tasted the result this past weekend after 2 weeks of natural priming. Very drinkable with plenty of cascade and centennial in the nose and a clean, balanced finish. Malt character could be a bit more interesting but the beer is very satisfying. Color is darker than fits the style, but it should be expected when using malt extract. This is the first beer that has not had any detectable "extract twang," which I have a feeling is due to the full volume boil. Also the cleanest yeast character of any brewed beers but it's hard to know how much is due to the WLP001 and how much is due to temperature control. A photo of the final product:

Sweet Stout

A subtle love affair with all things coffee inspired my desire to brew a coffee stout. Not wanting to rely on spurious AG recipes on homebrew forums, I chose to brew the sweet stout recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. I used whirlflocc this time but the beer may be too dark to notice clarity. I plan to split the beer into a few smaller carboys after fermentation to try different techniques for adding coffee to the stout. Within 12 hours I was getting blowoff in the primary, which is a first for me. Hacked together a blowoff assembly using an old S-airlock and some racking hose. Smells delicious so far - makes me wish I had a beer gas kegerator...


Recipe: Triple-X

OG: 1.060 (as brewed 1.064)
FG: unknown
ABV: unknown

English Pale Ale LME 7.2 lbs
Lactose Powder 1.0 lb
Black Patent Malt (525 L) 1.0 lb
Crystal (80 L) 0.75 lb
Pale Chocolate Malt (200 L - though I used 350 L) 0.5 lb
Kent Goldings 5% AA, 1.5 oz - 60 min
Fermentis Safale S-04

Currently fermenting at 74-76 F.


UPDATE:

2 week gravity reading and taste test show I likely messed up the steeping portion of the brew as my attenuation is very low - it's sitting at 1.034 when it should be in the low 20's. Tastes very sweet but very good, with an unexpected layering of flavors. In order to boost the alcohol content and perhaps add another couple flavor layers, I've added 12oz of turbinado sugar and 2oz of Wild Turkey 101.

UPDATE (10/10/11):

I kegged this batch and had plenty of problems including sucking beer into my gas line and breaking the low-pressure valve. Hopefully my next kegging attempt fares better. This beer had promise but was cloyingly sweet (can't recall the FG if I even measured it) to my taste, and only about half the beer was consumed before I noticed oxidation flavors that were unpleasant enough to convince me to dump the rest.

Joe's Ancient Orange Mead

Finally brewing my first mead. Wanted to do something special but decided instead to try the very popular Joe's Ancient Orange Mead (JAOM) found on many homebrew forums. Recipe below. It will be interesting to see how this comes out as others' results have widely varied; it should also give me something to compare future meads against. Using a Carlo Rossi jug - seems like a good container but not worth the price since the wine inside was not worth drinking. Within the next few weeks I hope to buy some local honey at a farmer's market and will likely try a show mead if it seems high quality. I will be swirling the jug as often as possible during initial fermentation to drive off CO2 as I read some recent meadmakers of the year stressed degassing for making great mead.

JAOM

~3.5 lb Sue Bee clover honey
1 navel orange (fruit and skin only, rind removed)
1.5 cloves
1 stick cinnamon (split open)
2/3 packet fleishmann's bread yeast

OG 1.150 (before slight topoff)


UPDATE (8/15/10):

It's been 4 weeks. Transfered to new 1 gallon carboy and topped off (about a pint). Light golden color but still opaque. Sample tasted slightly solventy with pronounced orange acidity and clove. Did not notice cinnamon. High hopes for the melding of flavors and a reduction in alcohol heat and sweetness due to topping off and more aging. Will do a second transfer when the mead clears.

UPDATE (10/10/11):

After a couple more months of trying to be patient, the mead was not improving and was dumped. Fun experiment, but would not bother trying to make something with so little effort for undrinkable results.