Inevitably when we dream of great summer beers we start to think of FRUIT BEERS!

A good lawnmower beer is a great beer to have on a hot day after working in the yard or playing with the dog.  However, when the temperature climbs a little touch of fruit in a well made crisp beer can really slake the thirst… and keep you coming back for more.

Getting fruit into your beer can come in three general ways: Raw fruit purchased fresh, fruit flavored extracts, or prepackaged fruit products.  Each one has its pros and cons.

Raw Fruit:
If you are fortunate to live in an area with a unique source of fruit in ample supply there can be great pride taken in making your own beer with local produce.  Depending on location you can often get raw fruit at the peak of freshness for maximum impact on the beer.  The down side to natural raw fruit is that from a beer stand point it is dirty.  If you want to keep wild yeasts and bacteria out of your precious brew this can be a challenge with raw fruit.  Secondly, the fruit likely needs to be processed in some way, such as a food processor or other mechanical mashing, to release its goodness into the beer.

Fruit Extracts:
The largest advantage that extracts have is the extremely low likely hood of a microbial contamination. These things are often made as alcohol based extractions of fruit flavors and they are easily filtered free of microbes.  Second to that is the ease of use.  You can easily control the amount of flavor you get by adding a little at a time to a keg or bottling bucket.  Just add an ounce at a time, stir and taste.  When its just right you are done.  The disadvantage with extracts is that many people complain they tend to taste like….extracts.  Something is just missing from the flavor profile that you can only get with fresh fruit.

Prepackaged Fruit Products:
Namely I am referring here to fruit purees.  With these products you get the advantage of whole fruit fully processed to expose the fruity characters and you get cutting edge packaging and handling technology.  Many fruit purees are flash pasteurized so the microbial contamination issue is eliminated.  The only minor disadvantage is how much to add.  You’ll need to add a puree in a secondary fermentor like you would raw fruit and let it ferment out to prevent overly carbonated beers at bottling time.

Overall, I think that Fruit Purees are the way to go.  You get pre-processed fruit that is sterile and packaged at its peak of freshness.

A common variety is the Oregon Fruit Products brand.  I have seen these a many a homebrew shop.  So give them a try next time you are looking for a fruit addition.  I know the next Strawberry Wheat I make, I am going to try it out.

Brew On!

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.

I brewed up a batch of Winter Warmer/Holiday Ale at the end of December. I have noticed that my sparging efficiency has been going up lately, yet I haven’t adjusted my recipes to compensate for this (i.e. use less grain). So I end up dumping a small amount of wort out prior to the boil because I just don’t need the extra sugars to hit my target gravities.

I must have been in a frugal mood because I decided to try my first parti-gyle brew session; making a “small beer” out of the late runnings from the tun. Here is how I squeezed two beers from the same mash.

I collected 4 gallons of 1.083 wort from my first runnings (I batch sparge). More than enough sugar to end up with 5 gallons of 1.060 wort which is what I wanted in the recipe. I transfered the first runnings to my primary kettle to start the boil. I added my second infusion of sparge water to the tun and collected 4 more gallons of 1.037 wort. I did some quick calculations used some of the second runnings to get the proper volume in my primary kettle (which later became the Holiday Ale). I conducted a third sparge to collect another 2 gallons of wort and added it directly to the left over second runnings. I now had 5 gallons of 1.025 wort. Which I felt was a little low so I added one pound of DME to bump it to 1.034.

I added this second/third runnings wort to a second kettle. I have two burners, so I could boil these beers in parallel. I boiled off this “small beer” down to 4 gallons at 1.042 OG. For hops in this beer I wanted to just do a single addition. I tried something different and added 0.75oz of Nugget at 30 minutes. Hoping for enough utilization to get good bitterness while retaining enough flavor character due to the limited 30 minute boil. (In all I boiled the small beer for 30 minutes, made the hop addition and boiled for 30 more minutes.)

So this small beer is a mini version of the Holiday Beer (without the spices and bourbon). I suspect it might be a little like a Mild Ale, but I pitched American Ale yeast (Fermentis US-05) into both beers, so it won’t really be very English. If it tastes pretty good I suppose I could dry hop with some cascade and call it an American Pale.
I have to admit I am more excited about this little beer than I am about the Holiday Ale. I’ll add some tasting notes once its carbed up and ready to drink.

I have a copy of the Zymurgy “Best Articles” book. It’s sort of like a greatest hits album of all the articles from Zymurgy. (For those who are unfamiliar with this publication, it’s the magazine that accompanies your membership to the AHA) It’s a little dated (published in 1998) but there are a few good reads in there, including the one on hot side aeration

I read an article last night written by the late George Fix about hot side aeration (HSA). HSA is the introduction of oxygen (in the form of air) into your hot wort. The presence of excess O2 in your hot wort leads to the oxidation of melanoidins in your wort. These oxidized molecules contribute to staling in your beer post packaging. The more of these there are the sooner your beer will become stale.

I have never worried too much about HSA because: 1. I don’t stir my wort much post boil. 2. I chill with an immersion wort chiller prior to racking the wort to my fermentor.

I always thought the biggest chance of HSA was during these later stages of wort handling, and when the wort is super hot still, i.e. above mash temps. However, Fix states that he believes that HSA happens at temperatures starting at around 86F!

86F!!!!!

His article warns about over-stirring your mash, splashing the runoff too much, and over- stirring the wort during boiling (at least I already knew that was bad). I know there is a lot of debate about HSA and whether it really happens with much ease or if you really need to work to get it to be a problem. Personal experience tells me that my process is not harmed much by HSA because I don’t really have much staling in my beers. At least I don’t think I do…

On the other hand, I will tell you something about my process that has me concerned now that I have read this HSA article. I am a batch sparger as I have said in previous posts. I collect my wort in white buckets as I run off from the mash tun. I have my kettle sitting up on my propane burner when I start. I transfer the wort from the bucket to the kettle by simply pouring it into the kettle…. It splashes a lot when I pour it, and this wort is at 168F. Then I start heating that wort while I collect my next running of wort from the tun. I dump that wort right into the kettle (wort from the bucket is at 168F, the wort in the kettle by now is near 200F) and I have more splashing.

Now like I said, I don’t think I have much in the way of stale flavors in my beers, but Fix was a smart guy and well respected. I do sometimes have a flavor component in my beer that I can’t identify, maybe it is a mild oxidation leading to HSA products in the wort prior to boiling.

What to do…

Well, Fix recommends making the same wort twice. He recommends that you really abuse the first one (stir the mash excessively, pour in the sparge water aggressively, perform a messy vourlaf, stir the wort several times during the boil, splash the wort around prior to cooling). He then recommends taking as much care as you can with the second wort to not introduce any HSA (this may just be doing your regular process), but with a little more care. I like this approach. Using two test batches one that is as close to your normal process as possible, the second… work hard at making the system fail.

Fix says that after you ferment those beers out and bottle them you may then realize how HSA effects your final product. This seems like a strange thing to do, and who wants to potentially ruin 5 gallons of brew?  But this is something to consider. I certainly will have to rethink my transfer method. Next time I may actually collect my running in my bottling bucket and use a hose from the spigot to the base of the kettle to transfer the wort.

I just wanted to put a post up stating for the record that I own a Corona Grail mill.  I know, I know.  Many folks knock this mill for many reasons: shreds grain instead of crush, poor adjustability, hand crank is not motorized.

Well, let it be known here to all that this mill works just fine for the budget brewer.  I have used the mill as is, without modification for years (at least the last 7 years) and it performs just fine.  I have used it for upwards of 25 plus pounds of grain before.  I have it dialed in just fine, and I don’t require much tweaking of the milling plate.  However, I have it setup so that with just a couple turns of the wing nuts I can easily increase or decrease the crush on the fly if necessary (which I only find required when I am using wheat malt).

Would I like a roller style mill with a motor?  Sure.  But I own a Corona mill and I make great beer with it.  My standard efficiency is close to 80%.  Someday I’ll upgrade, but until then I’ll save my money for malt and more critical stuff.