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.

Santa Monica Pale Ale

Now that I'm living in Manhattan Beach, it was time to check out the local homebrew store and start a housewarming batch. I found Culver City Home Brewing not far away - nice fully stocked store where you can go in and measure out any ingredient you need for any beer. It's also the meeting place for a homebrew club known as Pacific Gravity - I'll be considering joining in the near future. I wanted to brew a lighter summer beer, so I picked up their Santa Monica Pale Ale kit and a brew kettle. Recipe below.

Malt Extract: Pale 6 lbs
Grain Bill: Crystal 40L 8oz, Crystal 10L 8oz
Hopping Schedule: Columbus (15.5%) 0.55oz 60min, Cascade 0.7oz 15min, Cascade 1.0oz 0min
Yeast: Safale US-05

This is my first use of dry yeast (not counting the doomed Cooper's kit). I pitched late last night, and when I woke up, the airlock was bubbling nicely. I'm also trying a new way to maintain consistent fermentation temperature at the advise of the brewer working at CCHB - I placed the carboy in a big plastic bucket of water. This should smooth out natural temperature fluctuations and allows me to get a more accurate temperature reading since the water temperature should match the brew temperature. If it gets too hot, I can throw some ice in the bucket. I forgot to pick up some Irish Moss, so the carboy has a bunch of crud settled in the bottom already and my final brew will likely be a bit cloudy. Looks like the pale ale will end up fairly dark too due to the use of LME. If the beer turns out fantastic, it may be worth re-brewing with some DME to lighten the color and tweak the flavor balance.

UPDATE:

Bottled 7/8/10. Left in primary for 3 full weeks. Seemed to stay cloudy for a long time and I wanted to secondary it to try and help it clear but it seems current homebrew knowledge suggests long primaries are best. Lets the yeast work magic on the leftovers and may clear the beer better than a secondary. FG is 1.017 which should give me about 4.38% abv. Tastes pretty good. Pretty sweet and malty and the nose is less than anticipated but I have high hopes for when it's carbed up. Think it's going to be a good summer beer.

Apple Jack

So since I was sitting on several gallons of apfelwein (too much good beer to drink instead of some mediocre cider), I decided to try my hand at freeze concentration. I poured a couple quarts into an old LME container and put it in the freezer. Several hours later, I dumped the contents into a strainer and collected the drippings. Since most of the frozen leftovers should be water, this should increase the alcohol content and make the solution harder to freeze. This never happened. Each time I collected and refroze, it came out as the same slushy mix. I kept at it anyway until I had about a pint on liquid (which would still freeze). The result was considerably darker and stronger smelling. It did not taste very good. I had read online that most attempts to do this end up tasting badly. It was interesting to try, but I will not likely attempt it again unless I have a lot of excellent tasting cider sitting around.

Cal Poly Cup

Last month I participated in my first BJCP sanctioned homebrew competition - the Cal Poly Cup. This was put on by Cal Poly's homebrew club at a local microbrewery. I submitted my Belgian and Dunkleweizen mostly to get some criticism and hopefully brew better in the future.

My dunkleweizen (category 15b) ended up scoring a 25 (out of 50), which is "good" according to BJCP. The judges commented that they would like to see more yeast character. I used a classic, strong yeast for this beer, fermented on the warm side, and didn't do any type of filtering, so I thought I would be getting more yeast character than necessary. I understand where they're coming from though, since I've had dunkleweizens with a huge banana and clove nose. Perhaps the next time I make one I will bottle sooner to try and capture more yeast in suspension.

My Belgian (category 18b) did better with a 32.5, considered "very good." The judges asked to see more yeast character in this beer as well. Same story as above. I let the beer sit for a full 3 weeks, so perhaps I let too much delicious yeast settle out. They seemed to like the beer overall, and suggested adding complexity while keeping the beer as clean tasting as it does. A friend of mine added some brown sugar to this same recipe, but I could not pick it up in his brew and actually preferred my own. Adding some more steeping grains may bring out more complex flavors.

Overall, an interesting experience. I wish it had been more organized (I had to go pick up my forms after I had waited a couple weeks anxiously watching my mailbox), and would have liked to see full results - I have no idea how I stacked up compared to others, how categories were grouped, etc. I'm sure I will enter more competitions in the near future, but I see this criticism working best for starting with a good beer and continuously improving it. I plan on brewing many different styles before trying to really nail down an award winning recipe. Next in the pipeline will be a lighter summer beer.

Apfelwein Update

Moved my 3 - 1 gallon (minus several samples) apfelweins to a secondary/bottling bucket and added some Camden tablets. The tablets should kill off any remaining active yeast and help stabilize the end product. I'll wait a few days before bottling to let the cider to clear up (the gallon with Belgian yeast is still very cloudy) - not sure if I will attempt to carbonate at all. The final gravities are right around 1.000+- 0.002. The ABV should be around 9.4% as mixed, and there is almost no noticeable alcohol heat. The taste of each cider is remarkably similar even though they had different base juices or yeasts, so mixing is more for convenience than flavor. I got lazy today and didn't sanitize the secondary, but it was well cleaned from its last use. I also poured from the gallon containers to the secondary rather than use a racking cane and tubing to avoid infection, although it did introduce more oxygen. If I end up with an infection or off flavors due to oxidation, I'l chalk it up as a lesson learned and won't be overly saddened - I've been trying to make this process as painless as possible. Since the secondary holds 6 or so gallons and I have about 9 liters of cider in it, I purged the air out with CO2 before putting on the lid. As an aside, I recently had a bottle of Red Branch Hard Black Cherry cider and I really liked it - makes me want to consider adding some extract or fruit to my current batch...

Apfelwein!

I wanted to brew a new beer this week, but I'm moving in a few months and figured the less bottles I have to move the better. To curb my desire, I looked into making some Apfelwein. The process is simple: grab a gallon of apple juice, raise the gravity with some cane sugar, and throw an airlock on top. This can be scaled up or down to whatever batch size you're doing, and it doesn't require time consuming boils or cleanup. I wanted to start fermenting last Sunday, but my LHBS was closed until Tuesday. Then I remembered I had saved some of the yeast from my Belgian beer when I racked it. I didn't expect to ever use it, but it was there, so I threw it into a gallon of TreeTop brand apple juice. It took a little more than a day to see airlock activity. I didn't know how much sugar to add, and arbitrarily put 1 cup of cane sugar in, brining the OG to 1.080. This might be a little high, but we'll see. Interestingly, there is almost no krausen. I couldn't help but trying some today and it is tangy and delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I had to go get a couple more gallons and some more yeast. I got a second gallon of TreeTop and a gallon of the more expensive Martinelli's. I picked up some Lalvin EC-1118 yeast (recommended at LHBS) and repeated Sunday's procedure (though with more attention to cleanliness). Sweetened these to 1.062 and 1.068. I also got some Fermaid-K, which is a yeast nutrient, and some campden tablets, which kills off-flavor producing wild yeast and bacteria. Not sure if I'll use the tablets. Can't wait to see how this turns out - it should be a couple weeks before it's drinkable - I'll try to bottle some of it to see how it ages. Here's a shot of the Apfelwein.

Dunkelweizen

I brewed a dunkelweizen from Austin Homebrew Supply about 6 weeks ago. I didn't take any pictures of the brew day. This was my first "mini-mash" kit. Basically the same as an extract kit with a much larger amount of steeping grains (had to use two muslin bags). The only changes I made to my brewing technique for this batch was using tap water rather than store bought drinking water. I figured it would impart more flavor which might be lacking when using store water. A friend of mine said using distilled or drinking water isn't a big deal for extract brewing since the difference maker is what water was used when the supplier made the extract. I will probably continue to just use (untreated) tap water to save a few bucks until my brewing methods improve and I can discern the difference. Beer turned out pretty good, though it's not something to brag about. Hopefully I can find someone with a refined palate that can offer a more quantitative opinion of my last two brews. This beer carbed faster than I expected. If I remember correctly, there was a decent head after about 4 days, and just after a week I was getting a nice thick weizen head. The weather is starting to heat up, so it'll be nice to have the wheat beer around. Recipe below.

AHS Promotional Dunkelweizen MM

• German Pilsner Malt 1 lb 4 oz
• Red Wheat Malt       1 lb 4 oz
• Crystal 60L Malt             8 oz
• Cara Wheat                    4 oz
• Special B Malt                4 oz
• Chocolate Malt               2 oz
• Dark Wheat LME    ? lb
• Tradition 4.4%AA 1oz (60 min)
• White Labs Hefeweizen Ale WLP300

Quick Update & Some Thoughts

Brew #1, Cooper's Lager, has been in primary for 10 days. No activity has been noticable for serveral days. I will probably be bottling this on Friday and will be using Cooper's Carbonation Drops.

Brew #2, Doc's Cellar Belgian Ale, has been in primary for 2 days and the activity is very high. The krausen has only become about an inch and a half thick, so no worries about blow-off, but the airlock has been bubbling every second for 24 hours.

After doing some more reading, I've come across a couple details that likely have a significant affect on my resulting ale. First, I squeezed the bag of specialty grains after I was done steeping. Apparently this is a big no-no as it allows tannins and trub proteins to enter the wort, imparting undesired flavors. There are plenty of particles floating around in my carboy, but most of it looks to be normal sediment (minus an ugly black flake that I couldn't clean off the bottom of my kettle before the boil). An article discussing this can be found here. Second, I've learned that steeping temperature is important and proper range varies by grain type. For this ale, I just kept the steeping temperature between 150 and 160 F. I'm noticing many recipes call for a much longer steeping time as well, compared to my instructed 20 minutes. Finally, I've come across several articles regarding so-called "late extract brewing." The idea is that since LME has already undergone a hot-break, it does not need a full boil - it just needs to be brought to a sufficient temperature for sanitizing. Doing a full boil with LME may over-carmelize the sugars. Perhaps this is where my missing 0.011 gravity contribution disappeared...

Brew #2: Belgian Ale (Part 2)

The steeped grains, LME, and beet sugar were added to the kettle and stirred until the LME was well dissolved.

After mixing, additional water was added (boil big), and the heat was cranked up to bring the wort to a boil. This took a long time with our lousy stove top - good time for a beer!

Once the wort started boiling, 1.5 ounces of Liberty hops (Alpha 4.3%) were added. An additional 1/2 ounce was added with 10 minutes left in the boil to add aroma.

Boil is finished.

The wort then needed to be cooled so that I could pitch the yeast. This should be done as quickly as possible - I'm not entirely sure why; I think it has something to do with heavy proteins falling out of solution, but the important thing is that the beer tastes better. Lucky for me, my friend picked up a wort chiller. This chiller is basically a set of copper coils that cold water is run through. With this device (along with an ice bath), I was able to bring the wort from boiling to 75 F in just 5 minutes.

I then poured the wort into my new carboy and pitched the starter.

 

Water was added to bring the total brew up to about 5 gallons. I placed the airlock on top and now I play the waiting game.

I'll let this sit for at least 3 weeks before I bottle. Longer would be even better, but I anticipate getting impatient. Original gravity is about 1.052, which should give me a final beer with around 6% ABV. The kit is advertised as having a OG of 1.063 - I have no idea how I ended up so low. The wort is great tasting to start, so I have high hopes.

Edit: I believe I missed the starting gravity due to a combination of many things, including the temperature at which I took the measurement and carmelization during the boil. When the initial fermentation was just beginning to subside, I added a "1% alcohol boost" that I got in my AHS Dunkelweizen shipment, which is a pre-measured amount of dextrose that should do as its name implies with very little taste contribution. In the end, it's hard to really tell what my ending ABV is, but it's of little consequence since it tastes so darn good. The most noticeable improvement I could have made (as suggested by a friend) would be to add Irish moss at the end of my boil to pull out the proteins and improve clarity.

Brew #2: Belgian Ale (Part 1)

With my first brew settling out in my fermenter and a strong desire to brew up a second beer, I took a couple trips to my local homebrew store (LHBS) Doc's Cellar to pick up some supplies. I ended up with:

• 6.5gal Glass Carboy
• Carboy Plug
• 3-Piece Airlock
• Racking Cane
• Siphoning Tubing
• Star San Sanitizer
• Bottle Capper
• Bottle Caps
• SS Spoon (for the boil)
• Thief (for taking samples from the carboy)
• Belgian Ale Kit
  

The Belgian Ale Kit contains:

• Liquid Malt Extract (LME)
• Flaked Wheat Grains (for steeping)
  
• Caravienne Grains (for steeping)
• Liberty Hops
• Dark Beet Sugar
• White Labs Trappist Ale Yeast

 Here's a shot of part of my recent purchases:

The day before brewing, I made a "starter," which is basically a small beer with the intention of doubling the yeast count. This allows the fermentation to begin quickly and healthily when added to the full 5 gallon batch, reducing the chance of infection and off flavors. I took a few spoonfuls of the LME from my kit and boiled it in about 1/4 gallon of water for 5 minutes, cooled the solution, and added the yeast in a 1/2 gallon sanitized growler:

Before brewing, all equipment had to be be cleaned and sanitized. I first sanitized the carboy by filling it full of Star San solution, and after poured the solution into a old bucket which was used to sanitize anything else necessary during the boil.

It was handy to have this around while brewing since it's easy to set something down on an unsanitary surface without thinking. Next task was to steep the specialty grains - the flaked wheat and caravienne. The grains were placed into a steeping bag and thrown into a gallon of water at 160 F for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, the grain tea is ready to go into the brew kettle.

1st Brew Day 6

Another taste test today. Alcohol content is up to about 4%, but the gravity is at around 1.012, so I don't think it's going to increase much further. The harsh cider taste has come down a bit, and some aroma is starting to emerge. The airlock is about half as active as it was during peak fermentation. I'm feeling more confident that it will develop into something drinkable since it still has at least another week in primary fermentation.

1st Brew Day 3

It's been almost 3 full days since I pitched my first beer. Took a sample for my first gravity and taste testing (I should have sampled the original wort...). The hydrometer is reading 1.020, which means I should have about 3.2 ABV. The sample was pretty fizzy when I took the sample but had little staying power as it tasted flat. There is almost no aroma (which worries me), is very yellow in color, and it has a cidery taste. From what I've read, using simple sugar for the fermentable (which is what the Cooper's kit uses) has a tendency to produce a cider taste. Hopefully this flavor mellows out over the next couple weeks. Another thing which I've discovered that sort of bothers me is that the kit gave me a lager extract and ale yeast. It makes sense to use ale yeast as a beggining brewer since it ferments around room temperature, but why don't they ship a nice brown ale or something with the kit? I suppose lagers appeal to a very wide group of people, but the point seems moot. I'm trying to listen to the homebrew community's mantra of "Relax, Don't Worry, Have A HomeBrew" (RDWHAHB) but it is hard not to be excited and over-cautious with my first attempt.

My First Brew

For Christmas, I received a Cooper's Microbrewery Kit. It has everything I need to start making extract brews. The kit comes with a Lager extract, which I will be using for my first batch. I will keep this blog updated with my progress on this and future brews.

On the evening of New Year's Day, I pitched the yeast and began the fermentation. Original Gravity (OG) was measured at 1.042 prior to pitching. It took about 18 hours for the airlock to start bubbling, and is now bubbling steadily after about 36 hours. The fermenting wort is sitting steadily at 22 C. I get to play the waiting game now - I will be bottling sometime between January 11 and 15. No pictures for now since I can't locate my camera.