As I posted before I am going to attempt to make 4 or 6 one gallon batches of base malt only beer at the same time.  I originally was looking to do the following: American 2-row, German Pils, English Pale Malt, Munich Malt, 50/50 Wheat/2-row and a specialty malt called ESB malt (I saw it at my LHBS and got curious).

The more I think about the process though, I think I may parse it back the first 4 instead.  The main reason is that I got the green light to do this on the kitchen stove.  With 4 burners and 4 stock pots I should be able to do this relatively faster than if I was to do it on my two burners in the garage.  My plan is straight forward.  Mash 2lbs of each malt in 2.5 qts water (164F strike temp, 1.25qt/lb).  I hope to hit a mash temp somewhere in the 154F range.  I’ll do the mashes simply in stock pots, and store them in a warmed oven for 60 minutes to hold the temp.  This method will help ensure that they all are subject to the same general temp and temp swings for the duration of the mash.

I’ll sparge each one over a stainless steel mesh colander that I have used in the past for mini-mashing and steeping grains.  I’ll rinse each mash through the colander with enough 168F water to get me to 1.5 gallons total.  Then I’ll boil each one for 60 minutes with a single Magnum charge of hops.  Sounds straight forward.  I might use the big pot and propane cooker to fire up the strike and sparge water, just for convenience and speed.  But next thing I need to do is borrow a couple 2 gallon stock pots…

BREW ON!

I have began pondering the benefits of playing with my water chemistry. I was wondering how many of our readers make adjustments or “build” their brewing water for all-grain sessions.

Currently, I sort of blindly play with my water chemistry. That is to say I often add gypsom to me English style beers, but only because I can. I really have no idea what my current water chemistry is out of the tap. Therefore I also have no idea what it is in the kettle after the addition of gypsom.

I have been meaning to take a closer look at John Palmer’s water section in “How to Brew”. I have also been thinking of sending in some samples to Ward Labs for analysis to see where my water is currently at.

Any of our readers care to chime in? Do you adjust your water?

BREW ON!

Its been a while since I’ve done any brewing post the newest baby addition at our house.  But with fall here and my garage slowly starting to get cleaned up I can feel the draw of the brew kettle.

I am starting this brew log a little early, but I wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere for this next brew.  I’m planning on making a Russian Imperial Stout.  I brew so infrequently these days that I thought I’d like to make something big that I could age out in bottles.   I wanted to have something sort of special to drink with friends and family in smaller quantities when the time is right.  Imperial Stout seemed to be a good answer as the higher ABV and the dark malts tend to create more cellarable beers.

The more I thought about the process of making an RIS, I began to think how can I be sure to get the very most gravity points out of my mash.  I have a new 15 gallon mashing setup in a keg so I thought maybe now would be a good time to make one big mash and use the first runnings for the RIS and maybe try and use the second runnings for a Sweet Stout.   Why Sweet Stout?  Well when cleaning my garage and going through my collection of odds and ends brewing supplies, I found a pound of lactose that I never used.  So what the heck, lets partigyle the session and get two beers from one BIG BIG mash.

My plan at present is to make a mash that will giev my 8 gallons of primary run off.  At 1.25qt/lb I estimate I should get a wort around 1.080 OG.  If I use only 7 gallons of it for the RIS, I should get just above 1.093 after a boil down to 6 gallons.  I’ll then add 6 gallons of sparge water, run off, add the 1 gallon of held 1.080 wort and see what type of gravity I have then.  I’m hoping for something in the mid 1.040s OG.

Seems like a tall order, but I think it will be fun.  I am not going to brew this one right now, I am going to wait until I get some yeast built up for the RIS.  My plan is to make a Brown Ale with WLP001 California Ale yeast, then put the RIS right on that cake and oxygenate like crazy.  I also plan to make an ordinary bitter around the same time with WLP002 English Ale Yeast.  I’ll pitch some of that cake (not all) into the sweet stout.

After I work out the math a little better I’ll post the recipe for the RIS Partigyle batch.

What’s inspiring you right now?
BREW ON!

 Just realized I may need to get some snifters for this RIS.

I bought a ten gallon cooler for a mash tun.  I decided that the 5 gallon cooler just wasn’t cutting it with the bazooka screen.

The next step is to buy a false bottom with some tubing and a 3/8 to 1/2 fitting to connect to my ball valve spigot.

Then, I should be on my way to brewing that Saison I have been writing about for weeks.

Here is a curious thing.  I made a batch of Witte on Friday night.  It was sort of a last minute thing, so I didn’t make a starter the night before.  My plan was to make a starter while I was brewing the beer, let the starter go over night, then pitch the next day. Pitching late would also let me leave the wort I made in the fermentation fridge overnight to continue to chill down to pitching temps.  The ground water here is about 60F so it really takes some time to get an immersion chiller to carry the wort down to 65-68F, which is where I like to pitch.

As I was cleaning up at 1AM after the session, I realized I still hadn’t made a starter.  So I had to chose and stay up later and make a starter wort, or just pitch the yeast and hope for the best.  But as I was draining the kettle into my fermentor I realized I was going to have plenty of wort left over.  So I grabbed my sanitized starter flask and drew a liter of the wort into it.

Conventional starter wisdom advises against this.  First of all, most starter wisdom suggests your starter shouldn’t be above 1.040.  My wort was 1.053.  Second, your starters shouldn’t contain hops.  My wort had a 35IBU bitterness rating.  To top all that off the wort also had a couple ounces of orange peel and some coriander in it.  Definitely not things you typically seen added to starter wort.  Despite these “detriments” I broke from conventional wisdom and said SCREW IT.  I pitched my yeast into that 1L, put it on the stir plate and went to bed.  

The next morning the wort was creamier in color suggesting good yeast growth had happened.  There was even foam on top of the starter, which I never see with normal 1.040 wort on a stir plate… so clearly the yeast were chugging along.  I pitched the whole slurry into the awaiting beer around 11AM.  By 9PM, the beer was starting to chug along.I haven’t tasted the beer yet, but so far things are progressing along normally.

What have I learned here?  I am wondering if I shouldn’t just save my DME dollars and be doing this normally for most starters.  I wonder what the real harm is in using the same beer wort for my starter and pitching the next day. (Hold your concerns over the wort getting infected overnight for a different conversation.)   If the beer comes out great I’ll definitely make my starter this way again, to collect more data.  But it was very easy and cost effective.Only time will tell.

BREW ON!

I am planning on brewing up a handful of quasi-pale ales using only a single hop varietal per batch. The goal is to get a feel for the bittering, flavor ,and aroma of some varieties I want to understand better. I was thinking of a schedule like this:

60min -35 IBU
20min -15 IBU
5min -5 IBU
Dry Hop- (1oz)

I’ll figure the IBUs base upon the Alpha content of each variety I plan to use, which is why I didn’t list it in ounces. Except for the dry hop, which will really contirbute no IBUs and why the 5min is so low in IBUs.

I plan to shoot for a 1.048-1.052 OG beer brewed with 90% 2-row, 5% Crystal 60L, and 5% Victory malt. Of course, American ale yeast to keep it clean and simple.

Here are the questions:
Should I drop the 5 minute and just go with more dryhop?
And should I change the time on the flavor addition?

I was thinking of using these hops:

Nugget, Cascade, Columbus, Citra and Amarillo

Flame out is a term used to describe additions made to the kettle after the heat has been turn off of the kettle.  If you are talking about hops it is usually the time for getting a big addition of aroma hops into the kettle.

Other things like orange peels, coriander, chocolate nibs and goats can be made in this addition as well. The termination of the rapid boil slows the rate of precious volatile oils from all these additions leaving the kettle, which could be bad in the case of goat, because you might want to drive those aromas out.

However, there is still considerable heat in the wort, that you are able to nearly sterilize anything you put in the wort at this point.  

(A good thing in the case of goat additions. You certainly want sterile goat in your wort).

As opposed to adding spices, for example, in a secondary; where I have had occasional infection occur because not all spices are that clean as they often sit around your kitchen for ages before you use them.

Flame out is that time frame between turning of the heat and starting the chill.  In some pro applications, this time frame is also when the kettle wort starts to get whirlpooled to draw break material to the center prior to run off.  So the flame out can last several minutes to just seconds depending on the scale of your operation and other post boil activities (additions vs whirlpool).