With the gracious help of my wife, we got the IPA and the Kolsch bottled up. These two beers were made out of the same mash, then tweaked with steeping grains as I reported back on my Double Brew Day post.

My kegerator is dead, and has since been hauled out to make more room in my garage. So back to bottling for this devotee of home kegging. I didn’t have any corn sugar on hand, so I just used 3oz of table sugar (sucrose) for my priming agent. I considered using DME, but I wanted the beers to carb up quickly and DME priming can take a little longer than refined sugars. Both beers spent three weeks in primary and were looking nice and clear in the carboy.

Everything went as planned. The IPA had a finishing gravity of 1.014 and the Kolsch was a dry 1.009. I had considered dry hopping the IPA with 2 oz of Cascade, but the aroma from the later hop additions was already great, so I decided to save those Cascades for an American Brown in the near future.

We are certainly looking forward to tasting these two beers once they are ready. As this was the first time I have used Columbus and Centennial hops (IPA), I was pleased with their aroma and flavor. We’ll have to see how the beer is all carbed up and conditioned. I’ll post back with pictures of each beer and a taste review in a couple weeks.

Be sure to look for my next post on using the Better Bottle carboy as I totally forgot about one key factor about them that may have ruined the Kolsch.

Brew ON!

Last night, I got my stuff together for the Sam Adams LongShot submission. I followed the instructions that they emailed me including printing out the labels and attaching them to each bottle using a rubber band. I took a few pictures of the bottles and the traveling case I am using for transport:

So if you see a guy on the subways of Boston with a case like this, he may not have a laptop in it…

I am submitting the APA that I just brewed along with the Maple Porter I made late last year.  I am going to be dropping them off at the brewery today.

Now I don’t have any delusions that I am going to win or even do well in this competition…just interested in the whole process.
I have learned that life is about experiences and trying things like this blog…so let’s see what happens.

Hey Fellow Homebrewers!
Today marks the first day of entry for Sam Adams Longshot American Homebrew Contest.  It’s also the day that taxes are due.  Coincidence?

I set up my account today and entered in the styles I want to submit.

Here’s a screenshot of the entry form:

After you enter your beer’s information, you get sent an email with information on how to submit your brews. I am probably going to drop mine off at the brewery in Boston since I live close to it.

Cheers to Sam Adams for doing this entry process up right.

Oh yeah. The really fun part of the whole homebrewing experience. I’m being sarcastic. Note the italics.

Over the weekend, I did my best to wash my bottles. I had a few packets of PBW so I mixed them with water to make a cleaning solution. I took my bottle brush and scrubbed the insides well. I let them air dry in preparation for my bottling night (last night).

I used iodophor as my sanitizer. I made a solution so I could sanitize my bottling bucket, siphon, tubing, bottle filler, and all the bottles and caps.

I let everything soak in the iodophor solution for about a half an hour last night. The instructions recommend a two minute contact time…I wanted to make sure.

Once the soaking was done, I let everything air dry. While stuff was drying, I made up my priming solution. I had some corn sugar (3/4 of a cup) and I boiled it with a cup of water. John Palmer wrote in How To Brew that two cups of water should be used. I read that after the boil…and I made a decision that it didn’t really matter…yay me.

I siphoned the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket…doing my best not to splash any of it. I poured my priming solution into the filling bucket…as gently as I could.

Once the bottling bucket was filled, I started bottling and capping bottles. I filled several 12 oz bottles for the Sam Adams Homebrew Competition. Now I have to go back to my other post and find out what else I have to do to enter.

I took a final gravity reading…I am calling that 1.015…which is higher than my target of 1.012. Close enough.

All in all, bottling went off without a hitch. I even harvested some yeast from the bottom of the fermenter. Now it’s time to wait.

P.S. I tasted the sample I took for the final gravity reading. Any fear I had about the “grapefruit” smell I was getting from the yeast starter and airlock has been subsided. There was no detectable off-flavors from the sample. No taste of vinegar, which was what I was fearing.

My Kolsch and IPA brew session went of without a hitch last Friday night.  Today, almost a week later both beers are almost quiet with their fermentation activity, but I’ll continue to let them set for another week before I rack them into kegs.   I may dry hop the IPA with 2oz of Cascade plugs I have.  And I need to get that Kolsch chilled down for some cold conditioning.

During this session I brewed the two beers from the same mash.  Doing this saves some time and allows me to get two full beers out of one mash session.  I have two burners to use so I can split the total wort and then boil the two worts at the same time.  I have done this double sized mash a couple times and I find it works really well for me.

In my Kolsch recipe it called for base malt (Pils), some Munich and some CaraPils.  That is a pretty simple grain base that I felt would work also as a base for a clean American style pale ale like IPA.  My IPA recipe reflects that base and also has the addition of some crystal 120L in it to get more of that crystal malt flavor that I like in a pale ale.  My approach with the double sized mash then is to mash with enough grain to generate enough wort to cover both batches.  In this case I needed about 13 gallons of wort.  I calculate the amount of grain needed to be sure to hit the gravity of the highest of the two OGs (in this case the IPA at 1.060).  Then I can dilute down some of the resultant wort with water to get to the appropriate pre-boil gravity of the lower gravity beer ( in this case the Kolsch at 1.040).

Once I had collected all the wort I needed, I diluted the wort for the Kolsch and started the boil.  For the IPA wort, I placed the 0.5lb of Crystal 120L in a grain bag and steeped in in the wort for 30-40 minutes. At the same time, I started the boil in the Kolsch.  A second advantage to this steeping phase is that it helps set up my chiller process.  If you start both beers at the same time, then one beer will have to sit hot while you chill the first one down.  In this session, I steeped for about 40 minutes in the IPA.  This builds in a 40 minutes buffer for me to get the Kolsch chilled and transferred at the end of its boil before I need to start chilling the IPA.

Essentially this double mash session is like using a big batch of extract wort that you would then use with specialty grains to get the beer you want.  The greatest difference here is that I am using an all-grain process to control the mash profile of the wort I am making (which you can’t get with extracts) and I am controling the freshness of that wort (which you are always unsure of with extracts).  I have used this techinque to mash in a large batch of English Pale malt to make a porter and an English Pale.  The variations are endless.  It’s just like doing extract with grains.  I think that this technique is a great way to get double the production with just a little more work (essentially just the staggered start times difference for chilling).  Try it out for yourself and let us know how it works out for you.  Just be prepared to now have twice the beer on hand after each brew session.

So I was forced to move my fermentation bucket from my second bathroom to my basement because we had “people coming over”. No need freaking them out too with my constant airlock sniffing. Moving my fermenter to my basement did pose a problem though. My basement’s ambient temperature has been hanging around 50F due to the return of a classic New England winter.

I knew the basement temps were not going to fit into my yeast’s optimal fermentation temps (65F to 70F)…so after 7 days of rocking a constant 68F…I had to figure out a way to keep the bucket in the right temperature range in the cold basement.

First, I wrapped my fermentation bucket with a thick towel to keep in the heat the yeast was producing on its own. Then, I got an old heating pad, placed it on a chair, turned it on to the “Low” setting, and set the fermenter on top of it.

After 3 full days of using this set-up, I was able to keep the temperature of the bucket in the 67F-68F range. Nice.

Some my thoughts:

• I set the whole thing on a chair so I get away from the cold concrete of the basement floor.
• The towel also kept the heat generated from the heating pad from escaping
• The towel also kept light out…no direct sunlight in the basement but we have fluorescent bulbs that probably aren’t good for a young beer.

The more I brew and the more I strive for making beer, I feel the next step in improving my technique comes from nailing down good fermentation procedures. Not sure if my makeshift heating rig really worked, but the thermometer is giving me good signals.

I bought a replacement hydrometer on Friday and I hit my targeted SG on the American Pale Ale.  Here is a photo of the reading.

Sweet!

My targeted specific gravity was 1.050 and I hit it on the dot.
To see my brew day notes on the American Pale Ale, follow this link:

American Pale Ale