Brew Dudes

Finally – beer brewed by Mike in 2015!!! I was craving a German styled Hefeweizen not too long ago. As a beer drinker, I am not a huge fan of this style all the time. However as a brewer, I love the simplicity of the basic recipe, the complexity that the yeast strain gives you, and the flexibility you can take to sort of make it your own by bending a few style rules.

I have made very simple versions of this style by following this basic hefeweizen recipe Most times, I brew following a grain bill of 50% wheat malt and 50% US 2-row. German pilsner may be more appropriate but that’s the first bending of the rules to make it something that suits my tastes and desires. I have used hops like Hallertau, Sterling, Liberty, and Willamette. This time, I had several ounces of whole leaf Tettnang to use up so that’s what went in.

I used 2 ounces of Tettnang for 60 minutes and I put in one final ounce at 20 minutes left in the boil. Overall, my calculated IBUs for this come in around 40-44 (using Tinseth). I think the BJCP guidelines has the style maxing out around 15 IBUs!!!

OOPS.

I guess that’s the second bending of the rules in my German Style Hefe.

I use always use the simple and classic WLP300 German Hefe yeast here. This yeast can give you plenty of clove or banana or a combo of the two depending on things like ferulic acid rests and fermentation temps. I normally don’t mess with my mash temps, shoot for a single 149 degrees F infusion. From there, a simple fermentation period starting low, around 62-65 degrees F, helps keep the clove and the banana in check for my palate. I let it rise as it starts chugging, but this time based on ambient temps it sort of held at 68 degrees F for a few days. After about 8-10 days, I threw the heating belt on it and let it ride to 72 degrees F to be sure it finished out as dry as it could go. The total yeast character for this beer is fairly limited compared to what it could be. I guess that’s my third and final departure from the rules that define the truest interpretation of the Hefe Style.

This brew came out with a pleasant mild spiciness, minimal clove but there was some clove-y taste. The fruity esters are really restrained and largely hidden by the hops. The hops are over the top for the style but not for the beer in general. This one is pretty nicely balanced and the mild yeast character is playing real nice against the noble hop character I put to it.

Can’t wait for things to warm up a little bit again here. Once it does, I think this beer will really start to quench my thirst. Just like I was craving a month ago when I first thought it was time to brew a German Style Hefe.

BREW ON!

I have been using my Shirron plate chiller for only two brews so far but I love it. It provides me with fast and easy chilling for my wort. However, making it work with my system wasn’t as clear cut as I first thought. This video shows how I finally got it all plumbed up. I put together the necessary fittings for Shirron plate chiller and share them here.

The wort-in and wort-out fittings are pretty easy to deal with. For me, I chose to simply use barbed fittings. Each one is a half inch barb on a half inch female pipe thread. I chose these one over quick disconnects because I would have needed to buy extra parts and I didn’t want to invest more money in parts.

(I’d rather be buying grain)

The water-out connection was also an easy choice since I like to collect some of the hot water coming out of the chiller in buckets. One bucket gets a PBW addition and the other one allows me to have a good quantity of clean hot water. I used these two buckets in the end as my cleaning solutions for the pump and now chiller. So for the water-out fitting, I used a half inch hose barb but this time with a 3/4 garden hose female fitting.

The real trick was the water-in fitting. All the fittings for the Shirron plate chiller are male. Your typical garden hose from the hose terminates as a male fitting as well. Getting these two male fittings to mate requires a coupling that I couldn’t find easily near me. Luckily, the solution was close at hand. I had an old section of garden hose that still had the stock female end on it. I purchased a second female end from the garden hose repair section of the local hardware store which gave me an adapter, if you will, to go from the male-ended garden hose to the male-ended water-in port on the chiller.

I find this setup works pretty well. It gives me an easy break point just a few feet back from the chiller which is good should I need to use the garden hose for something else in a hurry. I also use the short adapter hose in on the sink in my brew area for filling buckets that are on the floor.

Overall, these solutions are not as elegant as using cool disconnects but I had most of the pieces already and I didn’t need too spend much more money to put it together. I am glad I didn’t because I would not have had the cash to buy ingredients so that I could be brewing two beers using my Shirron Plate Chiller.

Cheers
BREW ON!

We mentioned several videos ago that I had purchased a Shirron Plate chiller to add to my brew gear. In order to really make the best use of it, I felt like it needed to be mounted to stand and lifted up off the ground and above the height of a fermentor that I’d be pumping into. Hence, the new combo chiller and pump stand:

This is a pretty simple little stand that I made out of some scrap wood. The primary features are that I can easily remove the chiller for cleaning or storage.

I planned to plumb it up with some quick disconnects but I found that I had all the brass fittings I needed to run wort through the chiller already. I have been using hose clamps and barbed fittings on the kettle, mash tun, and pump already and I really didn’t mind it much so I decided to use them on the chiller too.

Thinking about it, I decided that if I stuck with this set up, it was going to save me some money on parts and it will be better for brewing.

I still left the pump slightly lower than the kettle outlet to help with priming.

In the video, I know the pump is upside down. I forgot to flip the head over when I took it off the wood box I used to have it on. It was slung underneath the box and the pump was in the correct orientation there.

Well, the next steps are to attach it to the kettle and run some warm Powdered Brewery Wash (PBW) through it and rinse it well. After that, it will be ready to go into service.

Hopefully, the plate chiller speeds up my brew day some which will make it easier to squeeze a brew session in when I want.

Stay tuned to see the pump in action!
BREW ON!

Some ideas sound great in your head. Some even make it to paper where they still sound good. Despite those two hurdles some ideas still don’t work out in reality… What does Nelson Sauvin, Braggot, White Wine and the Brew Dudes have in common…?  Roll film!!!!

Noting that Nelson Sauvin can have a white wine like character and that John has produced a couple; no several, great meads – he had an idea. “Can I combine the wine-like quality of Nelson Sauvin with wine yeast, honey, and malt and come up with a winey braggot?”

In this case, John completely hits the mark making a very white winey braggot. However, despite the perfect execution and the combination of the ingredients; in reality, it just doesn’t taste all that good. The winey character is too strong. Some of the honey is lost beneath the hops and the white wine yeast (Lavin D47).

John’s proportions are basically 75% honey to 25% malt. He pitched a good amount of yeast and got a good ferment.  Everything went as planned but there was a distinct phenol, maybe medicinal, aspect late in the palate of the braggot. Perhaps in the end, the flavors of a great white wine and a beer/braggot just do not play well together.

Maybe in several months this expensive mistake will age out a bit and the flavors will mellow into something more drinkable. For now, we are left with the reality that sometimes even good ideas don’t turn out. (Although this was a great exercise in seeing a description about hops and then seeing it actually well executed in a beverage.)

CHEERS! BREW ON!