Brew Dudes Homebrewing Blog

Black Lager Brew Day

On December 11, 2013

Let’s do a brew day recap with a video to boot!

Mike and I have been tasked to brew Yule Lagers. What is a Yule lager? It’s up to your own interpretation, I think.

Certainly, it has to be a lager but what kind of lager is the brewer’s choice.

I am not sure what Mike is brewing but my feeling was that a dark, roasty lager would be good to the celebrate the Yule time.

So I put together a black lager recipe and brewed it up. The big thing to give this beer color and roastiness was the use of roasted barley.

The other interesting ingredients for this beer was the use of homegrown hops. I had 2.5 ounces of Mt. Hood hops to add in late in the boil for flavor and aroma properties in the finished beer. If you check out the video, you can see both additions.

There is something striking about using whole hops that you grew in your backyard in your kettle. It seems more magical than tossing some pellets in there. I am probably making something out of nothing but take a look at the action in the video and let me know what you think. If you aren’t convinced, let me know.

The brew day went without any problems. I didn’t have any issues with the mash or the boil. One thing that I could have done differently was to start with a large pre-boil volume. All the whole hops sucked up a good amount of wort that I was not able to get into the fermentor.

Next time, I will compensate for that result by running off 7 to 7.5 gallons from the mash tun before the start the boil and that should leave me with just over 5 gallons at the end.

This lager won’t be ready until late January so it will be late for its namesake season but we won’t change the name.

To Yule Lagers!
Brew On.

Beer Filtration For Homebrewers

By John Krochune

On December 9, 2013

In Equipment, General

I was flipping through the Midwest Supplies catalog and saw they sell beer filtration systems. I wouldn’t buy one because I still bottle condition my beer and I need all the yeast I can get to carbonate my homebrew.

If I were kegging, a system like the one I saw today would be an option.

I wonder how many homebrewers out there do filter their beers. I see a product like this one as something that is not in the spirit of brewing beer at home. Maybe it is just my interpretation of the hobby, but I didn’t think having extreme clarity was the ultimate goal of a home brew.

I remember before I got into the hobby, and having tasted a few home brewed beers, I thought that filtering was crucial. The beers I had tried were overwhelmingly yeasty. The sediment was getting poured into every cup and I thought for this kind of beer to be good, it needed to go through that extra step of getting filtered.

Clearly the examples of homebrew I have tasted since then have improved and I learned after a few years of brewing myself that the yeast content of your brew can be controlled by a longer condition phase, gentler racking at bottling, and a more careful pour.

Still, the filtering system is available in a catalog for your purchase so it leads me to believe there is a demand for people who want to “clean up their brews” before they rack them into kegs.

So I will put it out to you, fine reader.

Do you filter your homebrewed beer?

If so, what are the most significant improvements that you experience?

Would you recommend other to filter their brews?

Leave your answers by leaving a comment on this post. Feel free to weigh your opinion on this topic either way.

I don’t know if I am convinced about beer filtration.

Pumps for Homebrewing

By John Krochune

On December 6, 2013

In Equipment

As I discussed in the previous post about wort chillers, you need to get an electric pump if you want to use a counterflow or plate wort chiller.

Because of that prerequisite, I read up on pumps for homebrewing.

Mike has one and uses it to recirculate his wort during the mash. They can be used during many different phases on the brew day and eliminate the need for the use of siphons to move wort from one vessel to another.

Looking at the prices of the pumps, they range from the basic model at $160 to ones that are built to handle nanobrewery-sized batched at almost $800.

Pumps with stainless steel parts are more expensive but in theory is more durable than the pumps made with polysulfone. Mike’s is one of the latter material but he hasn’t had any problems with it in terms of durability or problems with sanitation.

One thing to keep in mind when you are researching pumps, there are ones with different capabilities and you will have to be informed of them and make some decisions.

One of these capabilities is if the pump is self priming or not, which means if the wort can be sucked into the pump by its own power or if the wort needs to be fed into it through the power of gravity. The one Mike has is not self priming so he has to place the pump underneath the vessel that the wort is in. Before he turns it on, he lets the wort run down the tube into the pump.

Because of this set up, he has encased most of it in wood to protect the motor and other exposed parts from spills and other accidents like boilovers. When dealing with a pump underneath a pot or a mash tun, you want to be careful so that silly mistakes don’t ruin your investment.

There are other pumps that are self-priming and there are ones that can handle high temperature wort. Again, all these different capabilities you should research and understand to make the best decision for your purchase.

At some point, if you are fully invested in brewing beer at home, you should be looking into building or buying your own homebrewing sculpture with a hot liquor tank, mash tun, and kettle all tied together in one frame. Add a conical fermentor to this setup, and you will be living the homebrewing dream!

Brew ON!

Homegrown IPA Tasting

By Mike

On December 4, 2013

In Videos

Not long ago we got contacted by Echo View Farms about testing out their Homegrown IPA all grain homebrew kit. I brewed up this ten gallon batch and split the wort into two fermentors so I could pitch two yeasts. This weeks video, we give the finish product a taste.

The most exciting part of this recipe is the collaboration Echo View Farms has with Riverbend Malt House. The base malt and one of the flavor malts (Heritage Malt) are both 6-row based. Most often you find craft and homebrew beer makers using 2-row varieties. I certainly haven’t brewed with 6-row that I can remember so we were thrilled to get a chance.

The brew session went OK. I came up a little shy on the original gravity according to the recipe’s predictions. I was 1.050 vs. the 1.058 target. I suspect this is due to the crush on the malt. Not a big deal as normally I think many brewers doing all grain would likely order a recipe uncrushed and crush it just before brewing.

Second, issue was that the Cascade hops in the recipe we a bit dark in color. Little brown and still somewhat wet feeling. Now that may or not have been an issue, as maybe these cascades from North Carolina were just extra resiny or had a lot of oils. But the drying of these hops did seem a little suspect.

(Both of these issues were also noted my Michael Tonsmeire of The Mad Fermenationist Blog)

That said, the beer certainly didn’t seem to suffer much from these potential issues. I found that the malt profile was fairly rich for an IPA. The flavor from the Chinook Hops was pretty prevalent, piney and resiny. Overall, I think the beer was pretty well balanced more as an American Pale Ale rather than an IPA. A big charge of chinook and cascade as a dry hop would go pretty far to getting more IPA like. While maybe pulling back on the chocolate malt and heritage a bit. Its hard to say how these malts all played well together not knowing what the base malt tastes like on its own.

Overall, we really enjoyed the experience and the opportunity. The beer is very drinkable and is an excellent jumping off point for experimentation. Maybe dry hopping with some Amarillo and Citra would be pretty interesting.

So if you are interested in seeing what happening in North Carolina with malts and hops check these guys out. Order some hops or some malt and you’ll be rewarded. The bag that our malt came in also had a label for some Rye Malt (not in this recipe). I’d love to maybe get a hold of some of that stuff and see how it performs.

Thanks again to the good folks in North Carolina for letting us try out their wares.

BREW ON!

Different Types of Wort Chillers

By John Krochune

On December 2, 2013

In Equipment

The larger than normal More Beer catalog came in the mail today and I have to applaud the information provided about wort chillers.

As a beginner homebrewer, I didn’t know much about this piece of equipment and the detail provided in the typical homebrewing product catalog was limited.

The descriptions of the wort chillers pointed out what volume of beer it could chill, how fast it could chill it, and a little bit about how it worked.

Of the three bits of information that were presented, the chill speed was the one that stuck out. If you could get your wort cooled to fermentation temperatures in a few minutes with a plate chiller rather than over a half hour with an immersion chiller, why wouldn’t you get a plate chiller?

Well, the price was a deterrent since most of them were close to 200 dollars or more. Moreover, I didn’t know how they would work. How would you get wort into them?

What I was looking for was a thorough write up of the different types of wort chillers including counterflow ones as well. There have been articles in BYO but for me, this is the first time I have seen a well written section right alongside products that you could purchase as a next step.

The biggest distinction between using an immersion chiller and any other kind is having an electric pump to move your wort from place to place. If you haven’t made that leap as a homebrewer (which I have not), you have no need for any other wort chiller except for the ones that you immerse inside your wort before the boil has ended.

For a counterflow or a plate chiller, you have to be able to pump wort out of your kettle and into your fermenter.

Now that I have made the decision of what chiller to buy easy, are you interested in knowing more about pumps? Me too. I will follow up with another post.