I think the key to lagering is to buy a fridge.  My wife bought me a refrigerator for my birthday last month and it has come in handy for the lagering of the Maibock.

Right now, I have the cider that we made last October conditioning in there and some maple porters from two years ago.

I’ll get a thermostat for it eventually.  This set up will eliminate the fusel alcohol issue I had last summer when my basement was in the high 70s in the month of August.

If you can get your hands on a used fridge, I think it is a good investment.

I had been thinking about using a couple corny kegs as fermentors.  Maybe even trimming up some dip tubes to be able to CO2 push finished beer out of the kegs to clean serving kegs.
Here are some of the things I am concerned about.

1. Using the standard gas out port for my airlock set up (tubing and a water jug), may have more restriction than I am used to.  A source of regular clogging perhaps?

2. The corny keg only holds about 5.25 gallons.  This almost ensures the need to blow off every time, and as stated in part 1 cleaning that narrow a diameter tubing would be a pain each time.  The fix would be 4 gallon batches.  I nice idea for experimenting with recipes, but my mash tun and boil kettle are all somewhat optimized for 10 gallon brew sessions.  Do I really want to ferment in two kegs for each batch?

3. The stainless keg is a superior container for sure.  Light, easy to move, relatively indestructible.  But I’d be competing for keg fermentor space all the time vs. keg serving space.

Fermenting in Corny kegs just doesn’t seem to have a enough plus sides.  Am I missing any?

See these other posts about fermentor choices also:

Fermentor Vessels

Glass or Plastic

I had to post this wonderful piece of information about yeast and yeast starters.  A great great brewer friend of mine, Wade, over at the BKB forums posted a reply to a discussion we were having about yeast starters and cell #s provided in the yeast packages we all typically buy from WhiteLabs and Wyeast.

Wade, a.k.a. 1n1m3g in cyber-land, is currently working on his PhD in the biological sciences arena and works exclusively with yeast for his research.  He and I have talked in the past about yeast; and he really knows his stuff.  When Wade is not working in the lab or being a great father and family man he can be found bumming around with the Boston Wort Processors.  A homebrew club here in the Boston area. (Please consider checking out their upcoming Homebrew Competition)

So please take a minute to read and digest the post I have copied below.  Its a bit long, but it’s amazingly informative.

From Wade:
“OK, OK, i guess I can try to make some sort of contribution to this discussion here.  I think there is a bit of confusion here about the yeast that come in the liquid from the homebrew stores, either smack packs or vials.  There are two key terms everyone should be aware of and the differences between the two.  One is yeast viability and the other is yeast vitality.  Viability is easy to define as it basically describes the overall number of yeast cells that are alive.  If you were able to count the cells under a microscope and then plate out a small, countable number of cells onto an agar plate the viability of the yeast would be the number of cells that actually form a colony as compared to the number of cells you plated.  Vitality, on the other hand, is a more ambiguous term that describes the overall health of those viable cells.  In brewing terms, it could be described as how fast the cells could divide and as well as how efficient they are at fermenting sugars.  Cells will have high vitality if they have sufficient fermentation precursors stored up.  For example, oxygen is required to build up sufficient cell wall components prior to fermentation because during fermentation (in the absence of oxygen) these cell wall components are not synthesized and are depleted upon every cell division until a lower limit threshold is reached and the cells can no longer divide thereby decreasing fermentation efficiencies.  So, even before you pitch your yeast, you can easily have a population of cells with high viability but low vitality if not properly prepared.  For example, the older a vial or smack pack is the lower the viability is as well as the vitality, but I think that vitality drops off much faster than viability over time. 

So back to the question of starters.  Creating a population of cells with high vitality requires that you give the yeast the proper nutrients that prime them for fermentation.  I think this is where Wyeast smack packs are superior to White labs yeast vials.  When you pop the smack pack you release vital nutrients to the yeast so the somewhat dormant yeast greatly increase their vitality.  There is no way to do this for White labs unless you use a starter to wake them up.  A starter is useful for both because depending on the starter technique you use you can greatly increase the total number of viable cells while at the same time increase the overall vitality of the entire population.  The most important component for the starter is oxygen.  Why force the cells to start fermentation in a starter when you are just going to pitch them into an oxygen rich wort, which inhibits fermentation, only to have that oxygen quickly depleted requiring a switch back to fermentation?  If you use a stir plate to add oxygen continuously to the starter you can greatly increase the overall numbers of cells in a smaller volume of starter wort.  These cells will have built a nice ample store of the cell wall components required for proper attenuation of your beer.  If you prefer the more traditional method of a still starter you will be better off if you give the starter a stir twice a day or so to scrub out the built up CO2 and introduce more O2.

I think a better place to add things like yeast nutrient (i.e. Servomyces) would be at pitching or a day or two into the fermentation.  The yeast nutrients add things like metal ions required for enzyme function as well as free nitrogen required to synthesize these enzymes.  Adding this to the fermenting wort of your beer will give the yeast a boost as they use up the limited nutrients that come from the malt.

I use a stir plate for my starters because I don’t use smack packs or vials, but am instead building up my population step by step from literally a single yeast cell.  I need the extra oxygen to get to the proper number of viable cells with the added benefit of also getting high vitality.  Either way, though, if you are using store bought liquid yeast, make sure the package is as close to the manufactured date as possible and if you have the capability, use a starter of any technique (stir plate of otherwise) to increase cell vitality.

Wow, is that enough of an explanation?    Cheers!”

(Standing) BREW ON!

Today is 14F here in the northern suburbs of MA. In the winter time it can be tough to brew outside if you are a propane cooker brewer such as myself. When the tank is going full bore it tends to frost up and get really cold as that liquid propane in the tank vaporizes. I don’t know if the propane actually freezes, but as it gets colder and colder the flow rate can trickle to a stand still and the boil becomes difficult to maintain.

Anyone else notice that? What do you do to combat it?

I have two tanks and two burners actually. What I do is fire off about 2 gallons of water and get it up to about 150F. Then I pour that into one of those part tubs (for keeping a half barrel packed with ice) and I put my propane tank in there. The water only comes up to the top of the base ring on the tank. The tank isn’t submerged in the hot water.

I put the tub on top of a couple folded down cardboard boxes to insulate it a bit from the floor, and I cover the top of it with a few old beach towels to help trap the steam. This seems to keep the tank from getting too cold and I can get through an entire session. If I need too I can fire up the second burner with the second tank and get a little more hot water going if necessary.

BREW ON!

So I have decided to “go all grain” rather than “go back to extract” for the first lager brew.

I think the majority of my hesitation is the performance of my mash tun.

Here’s the back story: I got a bazooka screen for the cooler I bought.

Here’s the admission: I didn’t buy the right one for the cooler size that I have.

Oh well, I can use the screen I have now as a strainer when I use plugs or whole hops in my boil.  It will screw into the outlet in my kettle.

Now, I could buy a bazooka screen that fits a 5 gallon cooler…and that’s the screen that is shaped like a “T”.

But I think I will buy a false bottom.  I want to understand the performance of the false bottom.  This lager brew gives me the chance to buy one and report on its performance.

So that’s the first step.  The next step is buying ingredients…but that is another post.

Yeaaaaaaaah!  Now this is a subject I know every reader will be holding on to the edge of their seat because of the massive thrill it provides.

Ok.  Enough joking. 

What’s the skinny on oxygen barrier bottle caps?  I purchased a bag of them for my hard cider, knowing that I would be storing them for a long period of time.

They claim to have an “oxygen scavenging agent” embedded into the plastic liner inside the cap. 

Do they actually work?  Has anyone experimented with a batch where some beers were capped with regular bottle caps and some were capped with these kooky oxygen barrier ones?   Were the beers capped in regular bottle caps unable to keep their freshness longer? 

Do they keep beers from getting oxidized?  Are they worth the extra $1.31 I spent on them?

My brother dropped off a family heirloom last Saturday afternoon - My grandfather’s fruit press.

Legend has it that the old man used this press to make apple cider.

I say “Legend has it…” because we weren’t around to see it.

My father inherited the press and attempted to make cider with it once when we were really young.  According to our mother, he ‘messed it up’ and ‘it didn’t come out right’.  Ah Dad, add that one to your (long) list.

Sorry about the trip on Freud’s couch, but I feel it’s important you know the history of the press.

It’s a curious artifact that I have known my whole life.  The press has stood stoic in my family’s garage for years and years like an exhibit in a museum.

Finally, these Brew Dudes are going to see what this relic can do.

When I look online, it looks more like a grape press than an apple press.  That’s probably what it is and we may fail miserably like other(s) before us…but maybe…just maybe…we can reclaim the glory of Ol’ Grandpa George and squeeze out a decent hard cider.

Some photos of the old press:

We’re going to try to press apples this weekend.  Wish us luck.  We’ll post an update of the festivities.